


Snow Blind

by LenleG, Phoenix_Sparrow



Category: Thunderbirds
Genre: Alan lucks out bless him, Bro Vibes, Family, Gordon!Whump, Hurt/Comfort, In which The Hood is delightfully EvilTM, Injury, Scott!Whump, Whump, and he shouldnt be given a gun..., bit of John and Virgil whump in there for good measure too, blind, blinded - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-15
Updated: 2020-07-30
Packaged: 2021-02-28 04:33:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 18
Words: 52,279
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22738096
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LenleG/pseuds/LenleG, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Phoenix_Sparrow/pseuds/Phoenix_Sparrow
Summary: Because who doesn't want to see Scott blinded and tied to a chair in a dark bunker in the middle of the Alps? Turns out The Hood is especially keen.
Comments: 97
Kudos: 86





	1. Chapter 1

The first thing Scott becomes conscious of, or really conscious  _ to _ , is a steady, unnerving drip-drip-dripping noise. It's soft and repetitive: accompanied by a gradually increasing awareness of a sharp, lancing pain burrowing deep into the side of his skull, as if someone has set at the bone there with a  _ drill _ .

“Nnrgh…” 

Scott lets out an involuntary groan as he tries to bring his fingers - and in the process discovers that his hands have apparently been bound in front of him - up to where the hot agony is shooting right through his head. His fingertips, cold and bare, just brush at where the stabbing sensation blooms out from a point slightly into his front left hairline. He can’t help the reflexive hiss of breath that comes out from between his teeth at the painful contact.

The throbbing wound makes his return to actual awareness groggy, his thoughts unfocused and Scott struggles to raise his head from where it’s settled against his chest. The pain, and the  _ dripping  _ for that matter _ , _ don’t quite fit into his jumbled, mismatched memories of the past few hours.

_ What the hell had happened? _

He remembers the call, the 'we have a situation’ and John's pale, serious hologram filling them in on the details. There’d been communications from the family of a skier who’d been reported missing up in the Alps. From the resort at Courchevel, on the border between France and Italy in  _ Les Trois Vallées _ with its grand summits some  8,983 feet above sea level.

The missing man had apparently strayed from the trails alone and not returned, even though a blizzard was well on its way and the resort visitors had all been encouraged by staff to make their way inside. Temperatures were very firmly in the sub-zero range, making the urgency of the situation such that International Rescue were probably now this man’s only hope, with local rescue teams concerned about the safety of their own men and women should they launch a rescue attempt with very little idea of where to even look in these conditions.

Scott remembers the flight out there, the sharp gleam of whiteness reflecting off the snow, foreign compared to their sub-tropical Island home, but still familiar to him. Familiarity borne of a family holiday a long time ago. So familiar that he could all but taste the sensation like a snowflake on his tongue.

John had stayed on the line with him; a gentle, constant reassurance, unwilling to let him go into this alone, even if Virgil's behemoth wasn't far behind. This is how their mother went, after all, breath stolen from her body in a flurry of ice and snow, and Scott had sworn long ago that no child would ever have to lose their parents like this if International Rescue could do something to prevent it.

He’ll get those kids their father back no matter what. He knows the pain of the alternative a little  _ too _ well.

He remembers landing Thunderbird One to scope out the ground. He thinks of John talking to him softly, relaying information from the ground team and the encouraging noises his brother makes as he finds a heat signature amongst the snowy, crackling whiteness on his screens. Virgil is nearly there with the extraction gear, but his suit has thermal technology that copes fine with the cold and so Scott obviously doesn’t want to wait while he could be helping. 

He knows he clambered down from One’s cockpit into a savage world of swirling whiteness. The cold, thin air at this altitude had stolen the breath from his lungs, making him wish he’d had the foresight to grab his helmet. Snowflakes danced mockingly in the air, settling in his hair and on his lashes and bleeding warmth from his skin. His voice was whipped away by the wind as he called out and, equally, the sounds from John from his sash didn’t reach him.

He remembers the shadowy figure, blurred by snowfall, trudging toward the high intensity floodlights of Thunderbird One. He remembers relief at finding the lost skier so quickly. He remembers it being a little odd that the figure doesn’t seem to  _ have  _ any skis...

The swirling whiteness of snow swallows the little figure, vanishing them back into the static until...

Scott remembers now, most clearly of all, like the memory is flashing before him like a video playback, the swooping motion of something solid plunging down out of the white blurriness, and the sensation of  _ whatever it was  _ cracking him  _ hard _ across the side of the head, plummeting all his senses down into that swirling, blank, cold whiteness that’s all around. He remembers hands on his shoulders, rolling him over, and then very painfully little after that.

Wherever he is now, it sure is dark.

Scott twists his fingers to feel at the thickness of the ropes at his wrists, chafing against his skin; stripped of gloves, of his sash and  _ comm unit _ , in a way that tells him he's been here, unaware, for far longer than he'd like. And it’s not just his wrists and belt either; thick ropes snake their way around his torso, binding him hard against the chair it feels like he’s been  _ placed _ in. Almost  _ posed _ . They’re sturdy enough that he knows he’s not going to be getting out of them any time soon.

There’s no wind in here, not a breath and it’s almost deathly quiet, his ears straining for the slightest noise, save for that irritating  _ drip-drip-dripping  _ that’s been going on constantly. He's cold, but not overly, letting him know that wherever he is, wherever this dark room might be, at least his attacker has not left him out in the snow to die. 

Scott's not sure if that's a blessing or not. On one hand, had he still been face down in the snow, Virgil had not been far behind. On the other he's not freezing to death - though it’s still anything but warm in here - but the cords around his wrists are definitely not what could be called  _ friendly _ .

Tugging against them has proved pretty futile so far.

The pilot’s breathing is loud and harsh to his own ears, his other senses overcompensating for his lack of vision. There's a sharp, metallic smell of blood and that corresponds concerningly with that now-familiar  _ drip-drip-dripping _ sound, and he can feel something hot and sticky seeping down the side of his face from the gash at this temple. Blood plashing onto the floor far below from off his jaw.

Scott isn't sure if calling out is a good idea or not, what with the way his comms have been taken and his wrists crudely bound together, but the eldest Tracy figures he's not going to get many answers any other way.

“Hello?” Scott calls into the darkness, almost jumping at the volume of his own rough voice, “Is anyone there?”

There's a creak of a heavy sounding door at his vocalism, though the corridor beyond must also be dark because it didn't produce the eye searing brightness he'd been expecting, assuming the sound corresponded to a door opening.

It’s getting a little unsettling, just how dark it is. Scott shifts uneasily in his seat, listening to the approaching footsteps belonging to someone he can’t see, but seem to be precise enough that they know, deeply unnervingly,  _ exactly _ where he is. His head is pounding.

“So, you're finally awake, are you? Took you long enough.” Someone sneers in the darkness, and Scott all but chokes on the breath he was busy taking in shock.  _ No, no it can’t be _ .. But he would know that voice anywhere.  _ Oh hell no _ . Twisting against his bonds, Scott renews his attempts to get up, to get into some sort of defensive position, as his eyes scan the darkness fruitlessly for the speaker. “I was  _ beginning  _ to think I had hit you a little too hard,” The Hood says, sounding far more pleased at the idea than any sane person has a right to. “But nevermind that…”

Scott strains his eyes to try and pick out the shape of the man in the darkness, pupils darting sightlessly from side to side with wide eyes and a furrow in his brow.

“Oh.” The Hood's voice has gone dangerously soft, like a bottle of honey placed out to lure flies to their deaths. “Oh, but perhaps the goods  _ are _ a little damaged after all.” Thin, cold fingers meet Scott’s jawline, sweeping along his skin and smearing the blood there. As he flinches away, trying to pull back, the fingers grab Scott's face hard, the grip painful as the man forcibly turns his head from side to side, as if getting a good look. “Why, Mr Tracy,” The Hood says with a voice like an oil slick, obviously delighted. “It appears you can't  _ see  _ me _.” _

Scott's stomach plummets as if in free fall and it's no small wonder he doesn't throw up on the man, there and then.

“W- _ what _ ?!?”

The laugh that follows is enough to raise goosebumps over his skin, a deep and terrifyingly delighted laugh at the predicament he is in.

“It would seem I’ve managed to hit you in just the right place to deprive you of your sight,” he explains, the vice-like grip on his chin rotating his head again and Scott pictures him examining the wound on his head, knowing, even without seeing it, that his expression will be akin to a cat that has found a mouse to play with. “What a…  _ pity _ .” Though it doesn’t sound like he thinks it a pity at all.

Scott attempts to pull away from him, his head throbbing again at the movement. The idea that this injury has robbed him of vision scares him and to be in the company of this man at the same time… Well, it’s little wonder his hands are shaking slightly. He clenches his fists to try and disguise it.

“You have me here,” Scott says, quietly pleased that his voice, though fatigued, isn’t shaking as much as his fingers are. “What do you want with me?”

“A very good question, Mr Tracy.” The man all but sounds amused and, even though he can’t see it, Scott can picture the shark-like grin that’s likely happening on his face. The fingers fall away from his jaw and there’s the sensation of something being  _ wiped,  _ damp and slimy, on his shoulder. Scott realises, a touch belatedly, that the man is cleaning his fingers, smearing the blood they’d swiped from his face into the light blue fibres of his uniform like he’s performing some kind of victorious ritual. “I must admit, I wasn’t expecting my little trap to work half as well as it did.” The Hood twists his fingers sharply into the hard muscle of his foe’s shoulder, provoking a cry of pain before taking a triumphant step back, leaving Scott straining to work out what’s happening in the darkness he’s been thrown into.

There’s a fear bubbling up in the back of the pilot’s throat. A fear that he’d almost rather die than show this man. Scott has no idea what’s happened to make him… well,  _ blind _ , and no idea if it’s even in any way fixable. Throwing up on The Hood’s feet is looking better and better every passing second.

“It seems prudent to make the best of the situation, does it not?” the man looming in the darkness continues, as if to make sure Scott knows he hasn’t left, that he’s still  _ watching.  _ “After all, I’m sure your delightful brothers will come after you. The middle one,  _ Virgil _ is it? I believe he is already on his way. Why settle for one member of your  _ blasted _ International Rescue when I could… make a collection.” 

“You bastard!” the eldest Tracy grits out from behind his teeth. Coldness that has nothing to do with the temperature is creeping up Scott’s chest, icy fingers chilling his bloodstream from the inside out. His little brothers are his  _ everything _ and his bare fingers scratch rabidly at his own palms as he tries to loosen the ropes there, twisting viciously in his seat in his struggles to free himself. “Don’t you  _ dare _ touch Virgil. Don’t you dare!”

Despite the intense fear bubbling in his gut, the idea that The Hood might lay even a finger on any of his brothers is something he will not stand for. Though, that terror increases when he realises that, without sight, what can he do to stop it? He has no comms, no idea where he is and he can’t even see the man right in front of him.

He feels his shoulders sag of their own volition, the realisation that there is literally nothing he can do to prevent any of this crushing him like an anvil.

“Do what you want with me, just leave Virgil alone,” he says, quiet and hoarse. Scott Tracy would take any punishment in less than a heartbeat if it meant protecting his brothers.

A dry chuckle from The Hood makes Scott shudder.

“I don’t think you’re in any position to make demands of me, Mr Tracy,” the man says, his voice slippery as silk.

Scott’s sightless eyes screw shut as he lowers his head toward his chest, resting his chin against his collarbone to try and take some of the pressure away. He’s said too much, given away too much. The pain feels like it’s really reaching a crescendo now, the intensity pulsing sharply behind his temples and eyes. In some ways, he feels almost  _ glad _ he can’t see because he’s pretty certain that the world would be spinning, and he’d feel even more nauseous than he already does, if he could.

Scott shivers slightly, also a little bit glad he can’t see the look on The Hood’s face: he doesn't want to witness the satisfaction spread there at having the  _ great  _ Scott Tracy at his definitive lack of mercy.

A particularly painful throb if his head causes Scott to let out an involuntary groan, his chin sinks further onto his chest. He considers passing out again as a viable option to just not be  _ here _ any more.

“You would do well to  _ pay. Attention _ . To me,” the man hisses softly in the darkness, low and dangerous. It takes Scott longer than he'd have liked to process the fact The Hood had, in fact, still been talking to him this whole time.

Raising his head from his chest seems like too much effort. Perhaps it would be better if The Hood thinks he simply  _ has  _ passed out again…

But cruel, thin fingers don't let him get away with the ruse as they seize his jaw again, pressing bruisingly hard against bone, forcing him to face him. Scott takes a moment to lament, bitterly, that nothing can ever be  _ simple _ .

“ _ Tracy.” _ He can feel the man's breath, hot and damp against his skin as The Hood leans in, close and intimidating. The pool of nausea in Scott's stomach swirls unpleasantly at the sensation. “I asked you a  _ question _ .” The words are a low, threatening exhale - not much more than a black, wet whisper of warning. “It would, perhaps, even benefit those precious  _ brothers  _ of yours to answer me. Hmm?” 

Scott makes a weak noise of protest, something that may have even been words before they got filtered out as garbage through his larynx. 

The younger man's lack of coherent response elicits a growl of annoyance from the elder. The fingers dig cruelly into the softer skin of Scott's cheeks, cutting nail-shaped crescents there. He has a fleeting moment of hope that he doesn't contract anything nasty from whatever germs are lurking under The Hood's dirty fingernails before there's a violent pressure in his spine as his head is twisted sharply to the side so that the man can hiss directly into his ear.

“You would do well to remember that without you spilling the secrets of your Thunderbirds, you are of  _ very _ little use to me.” Could he have seen it, the look The Hood was giving him would have chilled Scott to the marrow in his bones.

“You…” There's a dizzying moment as Scott struggles to find the oxygen to string words together. “H'v gotta be k... kidding,” he gasps. “I'm not telling… Y-you any-th..thing about the…” The sharp  _ crack _ of a fist meeting his jaw breaks him off, giving him the sensation of the world spinning, but it does little to affect his resolve.

He knows The Hood could do  _ God knows what _ with the power of their crafts, with the vehicles designed by their  _ father _ , at his disposal. The world needs the Thunderbirds, with or without him, and Scott just has to trust that Virgil can look after himself for the time being.

He knows though, in his sinking heart, that the moment his brother realises he's in danger, he'll come running. John's probably already got him tracked down. In his mind's eye, Scott can practically see those deft, long fingers flying over his holograms, pulling up coordinates…

Scott doesn't know if the thought is comforting or not. 

Hell though,  _ John _ . The eldest of the brothers doesn't even want to think about what destruction The Hood could wreak with control of Thunderbird Five. About what he could do to John, trapped up there all alone with nothing but a deadly vacuum all arou...

A  _ snarling  _ interrupts his thoughts and then, suddenly, there are fists wound tight in his uniform, wrenching him upward - chair and all - into the air like he weighs no more than a child. It's a frightening display of sheer raw power and Scott is so taken aback by it that he's entirely unprepared for the  _ swoop  _ of momentum as he gets tossed aside like a puppet with its strings cut.

He hits hard, unable to twist his bound hands in any way that would catch his weight and Scott finds himself with a mouthful of grit as his head bounces off the ground, chin first so that his teeth snap painfully together, reverberating agony through his skull. Stars burst, like one of John's fractal galaxies, across his vision and it's the only thing he's seen in what feels like hours so the searing pain that comes with the frittering, disjointed brightness is  _ almost _ worth it.

When he comes back to himself, Scott’s on his side, gasping for air. Dizzy and disorientated, he distantly notices that he can feel fresh blood slipping down the side of his face and into the dirt and, he realises with horror, that his head wound must have scraped delightfully through the filth on the floor following his impact with concrete. 

_ A head wound full of grit, _ Scott grimaces, spitting crunchy sand out of his mouth,  _ just what I always wanted. _

There are footsteps storming furiously away from him, echoing something awful on the hard floor. The sound reverberates through his skull, the slam of a door going through him like a death knell, promising only solitude and  _ pain. _

Scott doesn’t like how cold he’s beginning to feel, knowing it could be the blood loss affecting him as much as it could be the not-exactly-island temperatures. He’s aware, of course, that head wounds always tend to bleed an awful lot and look worse than they are, but in this case, he’s pretty sure he’s losing blood too quickly.

Or… is he? It's not like he can see how much has run down the side of his face, he can’t base his analysis on a visual check like he would a person he was rescuing. He knows it’s been dripping down onto the floor but without seeing the pool, he has no idea how severe the loss is.

How much of this, then, could be psychological? He hangs onto the possibility, hoping his mind is making it out to be worse than it is.

Though… the ends of his fingertips  _ are _ starting to feel numb. Behind his closed lids, he can feel his eyes filling of their own volition. He lets his head fall to the side, cheek and forehead against that dirty floor, his body is twisted uncomfortably while still bound to the toppled chair. He can’t see any way out of this. But then, he can’t see anything at all anyway.


	2. Chapter 2

“Danger zone ETA two minutes,” Virgil reports, looking over at Gordon whose been busy examining a holographic data map of their landing site. “How’s it looking?”

“The storm is pretty severe.” Gordon doesn't look up from his screens to reply, all neatly professional as he focuses. “We’ll have to land as close to Thunderbird One as we’re able to, or we may end up being too far away to be of any use.” He frowns as he looks over the display, taking in the cluster of tiny blue patches amongst the white of the swirling miasma below. “Manoeuvrability is going to be limited in this weather, we might have to go out on foot and seek a more precise area.”

“Any word from Scott?” There's a deep furrow of worry in Virgil's brow as Gordon just shrugs. The younger is still staring intently at the storm readings that have picked up considerably since Scott landed, trying to establish the safest ground for the landing struts. “John?” A flick of Virgil’s fingers calls up the hologram of their space bound brother. “What's the status of Thunderbird One? Has Scott found the skier yet?”

If Virgil is surprised at the matching furrow in John's brow, he… well actually he does a pretty poor job of hiding it.

“Uh-oh.” Virgil can't help grinning at him. “Don't tell me that's the patent pending Space-Case-Frowny-Face. What's got you all concerned up there, Johnny?” 

“ _Focus_ , Thunderbird Two,” John prompts, rolling his eyes at the questionable professionalism and playful butchering of his name. “The blizzard is causing interference on Thunderbird Five's sensors,” John reports, with a lot less of a glare than Virgil had been expecting to provoke. “I tracked Scott's landing, but my comms aren't getting through the weather.” He seems pretty put out by this, as if having the most advanced satellite in orbit but being unable to track his own brother in _snow_ is some kind of personal offence.

To John, Virgil supposes, with a little amusement, it probably is.

“Don't worry about it, John.” Virgil swears he's not laughing _at_ him, just… alongside? “We'll get a connection when we land I'm sure. Interference should be less under the cloud layer.”

“Keep me posted, Thunderbird Two,” he says, before promptly signing off. He's never one to hang around and chat but, Virgil thinks for a moment that their skinny spaceman had seemed a little _embarrassed_.

The landing engines fire from below with a _whumph_ of force, almost jolting both brothers from their seats. Had it not been for the harnesses across their chests, Gordon's sure they’d have both ended up sprawled on the floor. He looks over at Virgil and raises a sceptical eyebrow: it’s not like his brother to make an error in the landing, but then, Gordon supposes, it is a rather nasty storm outside. Control of a two hundred and fifty foot heavy-duty transporter through the _air_ isn’t exactly easy. He’s pretty sure _he_ couldn’t have done it.

The sky beyond the wide viewport of Thunderbird Two is all swirling whiteness, thick and heavy as giant flakes are tossed down at the earth. Squinting, the blurred red shape of Thunderbird One's nose cone can more or less be made out in the haze. It's the only indication amongst it all that they’re even in the right place. Gordon lets out a whistle through his teeth.

“Geez, is everything still in one piece?” he asks his brother, leaning over. It had been a particularly bumpy landing for the deft-handed pilot of Thunderbird Two.

Virgil nods. “Yeah, sorry. Wind shear,” he says, and smiles over at Gordon a little sheepish. “Let’s go and see if we can find out what’s happened to that brother of ours.” The straps of his harness snap back into place with a _thwap_ as he gets up from the pilot’s chair.

“It’s not like him to lose contact like this, don’t you think?” Gordon notes, and the worried expression seeps back onto Virgil’s face. He looks up through the windscreen in front of him at the shape of One for a long moment before glancing back to Gordon.

“I know, I know. I'm worried too.” He shakes his head, now staring down at the comm. “Let’s try him again. Now that we’re under the cloud cover, we might have better luck.” With a quick tap, Virgil opens up an audio channel. “Thunderbird Two to Thunderbird One, are you receiving, Scott? Interference has been bad but we've landed.”

There’s a pause of crackling static.

“Scott? Are you reading us?”

No reply from the other end.

Slowly, Gordon’s eyes meet Virgil’s. The older of them has shuffled into action, packing the pouches of his sash with their cold-weather rescue kit. The sharp frown is becoming a permanent feature.

“John just said it was storm interference,” Virgil says, like he doesn’t quite believe it. “It’s probably just because the weather’s worsened.” Virgil finds a bit of a strained smile for his younger brother as he rummages in the contents of the frostbite-oriented medical pack, checking it's fully stocked… _just in case_. “You know, he’s probably grabbed this skier and is holed up all cosy in One checking him over. Nothing for that _squid_ _sense_ of yours to worry about, ok Gords?” he jests, trying to make the heavy atmosphere inside Thunderbird Two a bit lighter.

There's a roll of narrow shoulders as Gordon shrugs in reply.

“I dunno, Virg… something just doesn't sit right with me about this…” He can't quite put his finger on it, but he's got this _foreboding_ feeling _…_

But... well, maybe it's just because of this whiteout. Because of the blizzard. Gordon tries to shake the weird sensation off with a literal jiggle of his head, looking, for a moment, like there's someone puppeteering him wrong. After all, none of them exactly feel _comfortable_ working in the snow, not after what happened to their mother. So… Maybe it’s just that?

Thunderbird Two’s speakers are still crackling emptily.

It doesn’t _feel_ like just that.

“Thunderbird Two to Scott?” The aquanaut tries again on the comm, just in case. “Oi, are you listening Pie Face?!? We said we've landed! Did you get snow in your ears?”

“Let's head over to One and take a look.” Virgil joins him next to the blank holo projector, clapping a big gloved hand on his little brother’s shoulder to steer him away from the comms. “Stop grumbling, Crabstick.” He instructs, “Knowing Scott, he’s over there just sipping hot chocolate with his new extreme sports pal and waiting for our lazy asses to do the med-evac.”

Gordon looks up at his brother and can’t help the snort of amusement that escapes him. Virgil is even bulkier than usual when bundled in their cold climate thermals; vaguely resembling a big blue teddy bear with all that padding. It’s a good look.

“Simple enough,” Gordon, the tension broken, agrees with the plan of action and starts suiting up beside him, pulling the fuzzy hood of his cold weather uniform tight around his ears to protect them from windchill. “Think our comms will work when we get closer?”

“Thunderbird Two to Gordon.” Virgil speaks into his wrist comm, and is pleased by the answering bleep from his brothers wrist. “Comms between us seem to be working ok,” He claps a hand on his brother’s shoulder, “so proximity should fix the issue. One’s not very far. This’ll be a cakewalk!”

Later, he really, really wishes he’d been right about that.

…

Out in the snow, the swirling whiteness has thickened. Huge feathery snowflakes flutter down, billowing white against a yellow grey sky and settling on the landscape below, like the drape of a thick, muffly blanket. The flakes catch on eyelashes and in the strands of any hairs that escapes the confines of their hoods in thick white clumps.

Virgil’s breath billows from his mouth in a great cloud of white, blending in with the flurry before it’s whisked away by the wind. The cold stings his lips and nibbles at the tip of his nose and, vaguely, Virgil wishes their winter kit had had the sense to include a balaclava, or at least a damn scarf.

He’ll make John knit him one as soon as he gets home, he’ll threaten him with _gravity_ if that’s what it takes, you see if he won’t. Better John's dexterous, meticulous fingers take up the task than _Grandma's._ He'll be seeing the last lumpy monstrosity she made in his nightmares for _years…_

“It’s as cold as Parker’s ‘stiff upper lip’ out here!” Gordon yells at him over the storm, interrupting Virgil’s delightful thoughts of torturing their space-bound brother for knitwear. The younger Tracy’s wrist is up and glowing with holograms of the landscape around them. The _no-signal_ of unanswered calls glows continuously red beside it as they approach Thunderbird One, his boots crunching in the heavy snowfall - prints filling up as quickly as they’re made. “Huh, you sure we didn’t land in the middle of the arctic?”

“I’m not _Alan_ ,” Virgil replies, a little offended, “This isn’t like the time he set Thunderbird Three down in Antigua instead of Argentina.” 

Gordon huffs out a laugh beside him, watching as it physically manifests itself in the cold air before him.

“I don’t even know where Antigua _is_.”

“Well then, we’ll just have to send Alan there if we ever get a call.” Virgil grins at him, slapping a hefty palm on Gordon's unsuspecting shoulder that feels rather like being hit by a good-natured _chair_ . “I’m sure he’s _very_ familiar with it now, after all that homework John gave him on the subject.” Ignoring Gordon's comical staggering, Virgil reaches up to thump a fist against the solid metal side of Thunderbird One, having finally reached her hull. “Oi, Scott, open up, there are two popsicles here getting tired of being ignored, let us in to defrost.”

The thumping of his fist echoes eerily, the reverb through the sleek, curved metal plenty loud enough to not be ripped away from them by the wind.

There's a pause.

“Scotty?” Gordon thuds his fist against the hatch in much the same manner. After another long moment, with a huff of annoyance, he rips off his glove to lay his hand against the access panel. “For crying out loud, if my fingers freeze to this I’m suing him.” For what, exactly, Gordon isn’t sure. Maybe a years supply of imported, Grandma-free cookies? But he doesn’t have time to ponder it because the hatch slides open with a _whoosh_ of warmth escaping from inside. Cautiously, he peels his fingers back from the borosilicate glass of the panel, silently thanking Brains that these are designed well for extreme temperatures, and that his hand didn’t just have to experience the _tongue-icypole_ effect.

“Scott?” Virgil has pushed past him, face shadowed by the darkened interior of Thunderbird One. “Hey Scotty? Anyone home?”

Like the knocking, the echoes of his own voice are the only thing he hears in return. Quiet falls between the two brothers, concern acting much like the heavy blanket of snow outside, muffling their senses and creeping chilly threads out, blind feelers, seeking to curl around their hearts and tighten the grip.

The rocket plane is very much devoid of anyone, Scott or skier alike. And the constant silence is _really_ beginning to get on Gordon’s nerves. 

“Nope. Nope nope. This is just like a zombie movie,” he complains over-loud into the silence. Even One's engines are quiet. When you're used to hearing her purring constantly, like a tame house cat, the lack of it makes her disconcertingly empty shell feel like walking into a tomb. “Have you even _seen_ Zombie Storm Two: The Icescape?” Gordon hisses to his brother, “It’s _literally_ this. Scott just _had_ to disappear on his own in the middle of nowhere. He just _had_ to.”

“Come on.” Virgil, a paragon of brotherly patience, adjusts his sash and steps back into the cold swirling whiteness with irritatingly few second thoughts. “He can’t have gone too far in his search. He’s got to be close by, and he might need our help. We’ve got to catch up.”

Gordon has some very colourful things to say about that idea, things their Grandma would most likely wash his mouth out with soap for.

“I hate the cold,” he complains to deaf ears. Gordon’s not sure if Virgil’s ignoring him on principle or if he just can’t hear him over the roaring of the wind. “It’s cold and it icy and it’s _damp_ and…”

“... I thought you loved all kinds of water.” His theory about being ignored is confirmed three minutes later when Virgil _finally_ speaks up. Gordon is briefly thankful that his brother has the tolerance of a saint when it comes to having his ears talked off by annoying younger siblings.

“It’s _wet_ but it’s _cold_ and wet,” he helpfully points out. “I like my water liquid and _swimmable_ , thank you very much. And warm,” he adds with a shiver. “Much, much warmer.”

Virgil sighs and shakes his head, returning to carefully scanning the landscape for any sign of their brother or the man they’re supposed to be rescuing. A quick call up to John on Five helps disprove their _the-snow-is-messing-with-the-signal_ theory, which, as their astronaut does struggle to pick out heat signatures for them, is another point on the _something’s-horribly-wrong_ tally.

Snow seems to have completely covered any tracks that their older brother might have left but, in this weather, unless something swooped down from the sky and lifted him away, Scott couldn't have gotten too far in his search for the missing skier. 

“I’ve got a faint reading Northwest of you, about 200 feet away.” Up in space, John flicks the blip across his HUD with lithe, skilful fingers. Fingers pleasantly free from frostbite, Gordon notes with a scowl as the mark appears on the map at his own wrist. “It’s some kind of small heat source but I can’t say for sure it’s Scott, or even human.” John says, frowning. “Keep an eye out for the local wildlife. I don’t want to hear Gordon’s been eaten by wolves.”

“Why me!” comes the indigent splutter. “Virgil’s got way more meat on him, if we’re gonna be attacked by zombie wolves they’re going to go for _him_ first!”

“Thanks, John.” Virgil’s far too cheery for this whole situation, pointedly ignoring Gordon’s outrage. “We’ll call you if we find anything.” 

“You’d better. I’m monitoring your position,” they get told, and it occurs to the younger that Virgil’s cheer might just be being forced in order to alleviate some of the worry in those wide, blue-green eyes, just before John signs off again. 

The blip, it turns out, is roughly over what appears to be a grotty old ski shack - a mottled, ugly grey chunk of concrete that stands out against the crisp white of the snow. Virgil makes his way toward it, Gordon at his heels as best he can, struggling in the snowdrift that his brother appears to power through with ease. There is, at least, no sign of wolves - undead or otherwise. There doesn’t seem to be easy enough access for wildlife to be using it as shelter.

“Zombie bunker,” Gordon hisses into the gloom, as they press themselves side-by-side into the shadowed shelter of the doorway. Virgil’s shoulder tests the strength of it, and he’s much more pleased than Gordon to find it unlocks and creaks open with relative ease. “I’m telling ya, Virg. _Zombies._ ”

“You watch too much TV.” Virgil rolls his eyes good naturedly at him as he makes his way inside with Gordon cautiously following. “If you were a skier trapped up here, first thing you’d do would be to find shelter, right? This is our best bet… Scott?” he calls into the darkness, sliding one of the green, industrial glowsticks from his belt and bending it with a satisfying _crack_ , sending light spilling out into even the darkest, dirtiest corners. “Hey! Are you in here? Hello?”

Gordon isn’t sure if having the eerie green glow makes the zombie aesthetic _worse_ or if having any kind of light is better than having _no_ light.

“Ok, this place is a lot bigger inside than it looked,” Virgil notes, peering through various doors, down shadowed corridors and into dusty kitchens and locker rooms. “We should split up and search for him.”

“That’s a horrible idea. Literally horrible. People get murdered when they split up, you know,” Gordon unhelpfully points out. “And it’s always the fair haired, good-looking ones that go first!” he laments, a hand fluttering at his own brow like he’s walking onto a stage, not deeper into piles of old ski equipment, his feet crunching on broken glass and making dust billow up as objects get shoved out of his way. 

“ _You’ll_ be just fine then, if that’s the case.” Virgil takes the opportunity to fling a second glowstick at his brother, successfully cutting off the yelp of protest he makes at that statement. “Go on, Fishcake, get a move on. Real life isn’t like the movies, you know.”

And oh _boy_ is he going to regret _that_ little declaration later.


	3. Chapter 3

The Hood, reclined in a comfortable chair in the space he’s picked out as the nicest and _cleanest_ in this little hell-hole, notices their… _intruders_ on the old ski club’s CCTV almost the instant they enter.

_Perfect timing._

He grits his teeth in a savage smile, finds his feet beneath him and makes his way out to, _well_ , to pay a _visit_ to his newest guests.

The younger one, the blond, is of little use to The Hood, it’d be better to get him out the way; preferably as quickly as possible, before he can _complicate_ things. The bigger one, as the more robust brother, would be harder to dispose of so fast, so tall-and-dark-haired will have to act as The Hood’s leverage over his original _charming_ visitor.

It takes very little time for the Hood to negotiate his way through the corridors; having made it a point to become familiar with the bunker’s layout prior to setting his trap. He moves as stealthy as a serpent, all but slithering over floorboards that would have creaked under the weight of a man less adept.

There, peering gormlessly into one of the dusty rooms up ahead with a powerful glowstick, is a slim, tow-headed figure decked out in those blasted International Rescue blues. The idiot is both in entirely the wrong section of the shack, and completely oblivious to The Hood's presence as he almost silently stalks along behind the aquanaut.

The villain typically doesn’t like to do his own dirty work, _but, sometimes_ , he thinks with a vicious smile, _it is, regrettably, necessary_.

The Hood’s fingers find his holster, tucked close to his blackened heart under the layer of his thick winter jacket. His hand closes around the smooth shape of the gun within.

He’s going to enjoy _this_ immensely.

There’s the sharp, swift crack of a pistol and a spray of blood and then Gordon Tracy is falling forwards, stumbling over his own foolish feet with the impact. His mouth opens to cry out but shock steals the air from his lungs and turns the cry into a pained gurgle as he goes down, face first, with a thud and a tangle of limbs.

“ _Ha_ .” The Hood lets out a breath filled with contempt at just how pitifully _easy_ that was. Jeff’s meddling boys have had the upper hand for the last time. “Practically child’s play,” he remarks, casual but pleased. With one last glance, brief and laden with disdain for the sprawled figure, The Hood steps nonchalantly over the body, intent on making his way back to deal with the remaining Tracy brothers.

He pays no attention to the rapidly growing pool of blood on the floor behind him.

…

Scott has lost track of how long it’s been since he was last aware of The Hood’s presence nearby.

He runs his tongue over his lips, finding them cracked and dry. His head is pounding, his face sticky with blood and his mouth feels like someone’s recently tried to make him eat sand, though he doesn’t remember anyone _actually_ doing so.

_Probably. Pretty sure there was no sand eating involved. Hard to find sand in a snowy tundra anyway,_ he thinks. _Uh, most likely._

He’s still on the floor, still tenuously conscious, and that’s about all he’s certain of at this point.

His thoughts move sort of sluggishly around in his muddled mind, rather like icebergs bobbing about. They arrive slowly and leave slowly and when they’re around they occupy a lot of space, much of it below the surface.

_Hngh_ . It was getting painful to think. _Painful and stupid. Stupid to try and think about how he was thinking,_ Scott thought. It was like opening a box with the crowbar that was inside.

Scott does also think he’s been lying here a bit too long though, and that he’s lost maybe a bit _too_ much blood. He’s also freezing. His skin’s cold and clammy as that of a freshly plucked goose, prickling with what he hopes isn’t going to end up as frostbite.

He closes his eyes. Or at least he thinks he does. The darkness has the same terrifying blackness to it either way.

He doesn’t know if he hopes The Hood will come back or not.

He’s not sure if just being abandoned here would be better, or worse.

...

Crouching to inspect the dirty floorboards, Virgil can _feel_ something isn't right. It’s a hot sensation, deep in his chest, wrapped around his heart. A foreboding feeling. The corridors are lengthy and dark, but the thick layer of dust and grime on the floor does appear to have recently been disturbed. Kneeling down to swipe his fingers against the dirt, he notes the presence of a long, wide track of cleaner floor, as if something heavy was recently dragged over it.

A glint of reflection makes something catch his eye. There are dark, sticky spots, little splash marks of something shiny, fresh and red staining patches here and there on the swept boards.

Little droplets of blood.

Some _one_ heavy then.

The missing skier must be injured.

“Gordon?” Virgil calls warily into the darkness. “Hey, Gordo? I think I've found something.” But the younger of them must have strayed too far away, because Virgil doesn't get a reply.

He’s about to raise his Comm to put through a call when a sudden, loud noise reverberates through the corridors, making him jump. It’s a sharp, quick _crack_ of sound, though it’s been distorted by the sound of the storm outside so much that its source isn’t clearly identifiable. It didn't sound particularly close to him though, that much Virgil can tell.

His fingers find an old, stiff lightswitch on the wall and it flicking it makes the bulbs above his head flicker into life, glowing a weak, halogen orange. Virgil frowns as he looks around, uncertain of the direction it came from, but he doesn't hear it again. The only thing he can hear now is the roar of the wind outside, rattling the far away doors of the makeshift concrete ski shack.

Looking back down at the floor, Virgil decides the scuff marks are going to be easy enough to follow.

The big, bolted door they lead to, though, is yet another big clue that something with this whole situation just isn't _right_.

...

The sound of heavy footsteps in the hall warn Scott, who's still laying heavily on his side in the dirt, that there’s someone approaching the room he's locked in. The footsteps come to a stop with a kind of reverberating _crunch_ , made by _who knows what_ that makes Scott jump. He listens intently, tension straining all his already-tired muscles, waiting for the footsteps to resume.

There’s a loud banging that echoes somewhere ahead of him, something that’s maybe a fist pounding against what must be the door. It’s followed by the dragging, heavy creak of metal as said door gets... pushed open? Scott imagines light spilling into the room, illuminating and exposing him, even though he can see no such thing.

His breathing hitches. The fine hairs at the nape of his neck prickle. _There’s someone in the room with me,_ he realises. _I’m not alone._ He hears more footfall and he can literally feel the floor vibrating under his cheek. Someone _big_ then. Heavy. Scott feels every muscle in his body tense, coiled like a spring, as the sound pauses, stutters, then rapidly begins to approach him.

_Is it The Hood? One of his men? Come here to torture him for secrets? To threaten his brothers? To take advantage of his lack of sight and…_

The footsteps stagger to a stop, accompanied by a sharp inhalation of breath, close enough that Scott can almost _feel_ the person’s looming presence. If he were to guess, he’d say they were _just_ within his range so...

He lashes out wildly with his unbound legs, blind and terrified and awkwardly on his side. He’s rewarded with the crack of his boot against bone as whoever he kicked goes down on top of him in a tangle of yelling and limbs on the hard floor.

“Scott?!?!” And it takes him far longer than it ever should have to place _that_ voice, to stop his wiggly attempt at an attack against the intruder. “What the hell!” they yell. “You nearly broke my kneecap!”

“Vur… Vurghil?!?!”

“Some rescue this is,” Definitely-Virgil grumbles as he leans in close to carefully help his brother off the floor. With a strength that could only belong to their big green behemoth, Virgil stands the chair Scott is tied to, with Scott still seated in it, back upright so that he can start to work on undoing the bindings. Big fingers fumble over intricate knots and it’s so _reassuring_ to have him here being so, well, _Virgil_ . Virgil notices that his brother’s sash, and _comm_ , is also missing from his chest, which explains rather a lot. “Anyway, who else would it be, idiot?” Little brother laughs slightly. “Do the people you're trying to help beat you up often?” 

The pause of quiet between them sobers him quickly, Scott isn’t laughing at all.

“W-what are you... doing here?” Scott sounds slurred and distant. His head swings wildly toward where he thinks he can hear his brother’s voice and if he hadn’t already been sitting, the wave of dizziness that results from the action would probably have knocked him flat. Now he’s found his voice again, the eldest Tracy has to hold back the pretty big groan that’s threatening to escape him.

He mostly succeeds. 

“Scott...?” There’s a shuffling of feet as Virgil gets closer. “You ok?”

Scott guesses that it’s probably the sight of him that’s making Virgil sound so worried. He must look awful. Pale and sickly if he had to guess. Most people were in the early stages of blood loss. The light-headedness was becoming incredibly distracting. He blinks at his brother hard. Or rather, at vaguely where the sound of his brother’s voice had come from.

“That’s quite a lot of blood, bro.” Virgil clicks his tongue against his teeth. “Scott?” He's only about now noticing the curious quietness, the blankness in his brother’s eyes as he stares vacantly somewhere a little to Virgil’s left. Hands pause in their attempt to untie the ropes as Virgil takes a good look at him in the gloom, picking up his dropped glowstick to aid his examination. “Hey, Scott.” His voice is heavy with concern. “What’s wrong with your...?”

The younger man hesitates as the reality of the situation seems to dawn on him.

“Oh, Scotty,” Virgil breathes, watching carefully for any kind of reaction from his brother’s wide blown pupils. A beat passes and large gloved fingers press gently against his cheeks, tilting the older man’s face to carefully inspect his bloody head wound better in the musty green light. Scott doesn’t struggle against the action, he doesn’t seem to have the energy to hold his head up on his own after the rush of adrenaline that had had him fighting back has seeped away.

If anything, after his recent treatment, the gentle touch is comforting.

“Who did this to you?” Virgil asks quietly, a hot ball of fear clawing its way up his throat, blocking up his airways. _Scotty’s really, really bad off._ He tries to take a deep breath to stave off the panic. _Panicking will help neither of us right now_. “What happened? Hold on.” He scrabbles for the medkit at his hip, fingers unsteady with concern. “We’ll get you out,” he reassures. “Don’t worry. Gordon’s here as well and...”

The door slams ominously behind him, plunging the room instantly into deeper shadows. The something-is-wrong feeling Virgil was getting suddenly becomes so strong he nearly chokes on it.

“Ah, if it isn’t Virgil Tracy,” a voice like an oil slick croons. The name sounds like poison on such a hatred-blackened tongue.

Virgil’s eyes are being slow to react to the sudden change in light, but he’d know _that_ voice anywhere.

The voice of the man _responsible_ for their father’s ‘ _accident’._

Virgil shifts as subtly as he can. Trying to place himself between the owner of that voice and his brother, wanting to protect Scott from anything else this man might want to do. As far as Virgil’s concerned, he’s already done far more than he ever should have.

Scott makes a low, weak noise behind him.

“Well, well, well,” the Hood continues. “I did wonder if you would take the bait.” He walks towards them unfazed by Virgil’s protective stance, his pace slow and steady as though he has all the time in the world. “But of _course_ you would,” the man continues, “You’re nothing if not predictable, you Tracy’s.” He adjusts his cuffs like he’s entering a boardroom, not a dark, dusty room in an abandoned building on a mountainside where he’s been torturing a blinded man.

It makes Virgil feel sick. His heart is beating a heavy staccato in his chest. His lungs don’t want to work right. 

_He has to warn Gordon._

The Hood notices Virgil slowly moving his hand towards his opposite wrist and what could almost be described as a _smile_ creeps across his face, the expression darkening his already sinister features.

“If you think you’ll be getting help from anyone else, I wouldn’t waste your time.” He sounds almost flippant. “I’ve already disposed of the younger Tracy you brought with you. You won’t be getting any help from _him_.”

“Gordon?!?” A rush of adrenaline tries to shoot Scott right out of his seat, as if he’s completely forgotten he’s _tied to it_. He’s lucky that strong arms catch him around the waist, stopping him from toppling straight over. He thrashes in Virgil’s grip like a caught salmon, unaware of the inevitability of the net he’s been caught with. “What the hell have you done to him?!?”

The Hood just laughs. 

Virgil is torn between sheer abject horror at the idea that Gordon might be lying hurt somewhere, the same terror he sees in Scott's expression, and the determination to not let his older brother hit the floor. He wraps both arms around Scott and holds on tight, as if they’re about to crash and he can protect him somehow from the metaphorical impact.

He can feel Scott trembling. His brother’s body goes limp in his arms, the fight draining away as exhaustion and injury take over again. His cheek gets pressed into Virgil’s chest, his breathing strained and his sightless eyes squeezed tightly closed. Virgil carefully makes sure the wound at his brother’s temple isn’t touching anything.

The Hood, the scumbag, makes a show of taking a gun from a holster under his jacket and checking the clip before sliding it back into place.

Virgil stares at the weapon, his eyes moving back to look at the Hood as it’s replaced. He’s just glad Scott didn’t see that, though he suspects he may have recognised the sound it made. His older brother looks practically grey in the weak light.

There’s a low and dangerous sounding laugh as the Hood straightens his jacket again.

“As I said,” he repeats, “don’t expect any help.”

Scott suppresses a full body shiver; it feels like his blood has turned to ice in his veins.

_Surely this can’t be happening. Surely he was just taunting them. Gordon can’t have been shot, but... the sound he heard just now was unmistakably a handgun being checked. Which meant that cracking sound earlier had been…_

“Gordon…” he mutters helplessly, their younger brother’s name shaky on his lips. “ _No_ …”

“Oh yes,” the Hood confirms with a grin. “Yes absolutely. Five of you was always far too many, now wasn’t it? It’s about time you brats got culled a bit.”

“What happened to the skier we received a call about?” Virgil demands, afraid that the man might be being held here, at the non-existent mercies of this fiend. “What have you done with him?” The dark haired young man gets an arm properly around Scott’s shoulder, making sure his brother is stable as he leans into Virgil’s side.

He needs to get Scott some kind of medical attention, and quickly, by the looks of him.

“Ah yes,” the Hood is saying, as slippery as an oil slick and nonetheless deadly. “That call from the little family missing their _daddy_ . It was all too simple to _persuade_ those sycophants to send the broadcast really.” He laughs in a way that heavily suggests that his methods of _persuasion_ were composed entirely of threats. “There is no skier, you foolish boy. It was all a fabrication to lure International Rescue here. I know you children can’t resist your own cliché sob story being regurgitated back at you.” He looms over them, a thin, shadowy figure with hawk-like golden eyes that glint dangerously in the half-light. “Of course it was a trap.”

The whole thing was a set up, Virgil realises, horrified. The Hood is responsible for the location, for the distress call, for the man going missing... For _everything_. It makes it almost worse that Virgil knows, full well, that if such a thing were to happen again they’d respond to the call in a heartbeat. 

“How _dare_ you!” Virgil springs up from Scott’s side, almost dropping him, and he’s two wide, angry paces across the room before a _shing_ of metal stops him short.

The Hood has his gun out again, the black barrel pointed precisely at the centre of Scott’s heaving chest.

“Now, boys,” he says, almost amicably. “One of you is going to start spilling the schematics and controls for your Thunderbirds, or...” He makes a point of waving the gun between the two of them, as if playing a sinister game of _eeny meeny miney_ _moe._ “One of you is going to meet the same end as young _Gordon_ did.”

“You can’t kill us if we’re your leverage,” Virgil points out through gritted teeth, anger still simmering hot under his skin, competing with concern for his brothers and no small amount of fear for his own life.

“Can’t I?” the Hood queries, the barrel of his gun grinding as he knocks the safety off. “In that case, I wonder how many Tracy’s I’ll have to go through before _one_ of you talks.”


	4. Chapter 4

Fortunately, or perhaps, unfortunately for him, The Hood has vastly underestimated the tough kind of stuff Gordon Tracy is made of. He's a Thunderbird, after all, hydrofoil accident or no, and it’s going to take more than one little gunshot wound to the upper thigh to keep him down. 

Hurts like _hell_ though, he’s got to admit _that._

He’s got both hands pressed hard over the round, gushing wound, but he’s stubbornly conscious and decidedly _very angry_ about it. Gordon rolls himself over on the grimy, dust-slippery floor, kicking his good leg out stubbornly in an attempt to try and find some kind of purchase against the pain. He grits his teeth, all but growling - as if that will somehow help the fiery stinging _burning_ that’s lancing out through his nerves; the agony pooling at his hip and knee, the joints closest to the injury.

Whoever had shot him had taken him completely by surprise, the _bastard_. What kind of person sneaks up on an unarmed member of a search and rescue squad?

_A coward and a villain that’s who._

…

Virgil looks between the menacing, loaded gun and his big brother, once, then twice, then thrice and he feels like he can’t _breathe_. 

“The hell is going on?” Gordon’s voice suddenly erupts, full on yelling, from the speaker at Virgil’s wrist, making all three occupants of the little holding room jolt in shock. “Virgil, are you there?!? Virgil, I think someone _shot_ me!”

“ _Gordon!_ ” Scott’s head shoots up, dizzy with both relief and blood loss. 

“Is that Scott? Did you find…?”

A pale, skeletal hand closes viciously over the holographic figure of their younger brother, snuffing his image out like a candle flame. The Hood is suddenly close enough that Virgil can feel his breath, hot and sweet against his cheek. The man’s hand tightens painfully around his wrist, over the closed-off comm projector, the bones there _grinding_.

“Let me go, Hood,” Virgil commands from behind bared teeth, trying his best not to shrink back from this foul little man. Scott tenses visibly beside him, unable to see exactly _what_ the villain might be doing to his brother, but prepared to fight him regardless, handicaps be damned.

The Hood makes a huff through his nose that sounds more like a snorting horse than anything that should have come from a human being.

“Gordon Tracy appears to be more resilient than I'd have liked,” The Hood hisses, finally releasing Virgil's wrist in favour of addressing the both of them. “It appears, boys, that I have a bit of a mess to clean up…” This time he's going to dispose of that brat properly. “Just sit tight now. I hate to be a rude host, but duty calls.” He laughs at his own mockery, before stalking out of the room, the heavy door swinging shut behind him with a clang that shakes Scott's soul.

“No, no, no, no, no…”

“Gordon, look out,” Virgil calls urgently into his Comm. “The Hood is headed back your way,” He turns to look at his older brother, without even waiting for the ‘ _oh great of course it was The Hood, of courrrrse it was... FAB’_ reply before heading over to Scott. “Come on Scotty.” he says, resuming his fiddling with the ropes, _one casualty at a time_ , “We’ve gotta get out of here while The Hood is distracted. Hopefully Gordon can give him the good old Tracy run around for long enough for us to get back to our ‘birds.”

“What about Gordon, though?” Scott asks, breathless with agony. “We can’t just leave him here.”

“Not a chance I’m leaving him.” Virgil flashes his brother a vicious grin, all teeth, that Scott can’t even see. “I’ll rip the roof off this place with Thunderbird Two if I have to to get him out. Until then we’re just going to have to trust in his tenacity.”

Virgil feels Scott nod numbly against his shoulder. If there's one thing Gordon Tracy is, it's stubborn.

“You’re going to have to drag me out of here,” The elder of the pair complains. “I’m bloody useless when I can’t even see what I’m tripping over.” 

“Having to drag _you_ out of a situation?” Virgil says, quickly finishing with the ropes and letting them drop to the floor. “Story of my life, Scotty. Two words, Uranium mine.” He helps him up, slinging his arm over his shoulder. “Just try to hang on, I’ll do the rest.”

There's a long, drawn out pained noise from Scott as he's heaved up and over toward the door. The ground feels like it’s tilting wildly underneath him, as if he's stood on the deck of a ship, in pitch darkness, and his stomach rolls ungratefully with it.

“Virgil,” he groans, legs going to jelly, forcing his knees to crumple and turning his body into a doubled over dead weight in Virgil's arms. “ _Nnngh_. I think I'm gonna be sick.”

“Not on me you're not!” There's a hasty, head-spinning scramble as Virgil sets him back down against the wall, legs akimbo. A broad, cool palm pushes Scott’s head down between his knees. 

“Deep breaths, Scotty, deep breaths. Come on, we don't have _time_ for this.”

Virgil sounds stressed.

Virgil _never_ sounds stressed.

One big hand sweeps away the loose hairs that are hanging low over Scott's blank eyes, from where they’ve sprung free of their usual swept back style. Scott can hear the shuffle of feet as Virgil crouches beside him. His closeness brings with it his brother’s much warmer body temperature and the softened smell of hard work and engine oil that's just so distinctly _him._

It's not unpleasant, Scott thinks, pressing his forehead into that warm hand. Honestly, right now, there's nothing on Earth he'd rather have than Virgil’s solid, comforting presence.

“Better?” Virgil asks gently, and Scott finds the energy, nods breathlessly. He’d not been expecting the swinging vertigo the blindness has brought with it. Or perhaps it’s just another side effect of the charming blow the Hood decided to inflict on his head.

"Sorry," he manages and Virgil clicks his teeth at him, scolding. "I know we need to hurry." Scott frowns at him, struggling to get up. "I..."

"Take it easy, bro." Virgil's hand on his shoulder steadies him as the world spins. "Getting you out of here in one piece is priority one right now, ok?"

He leaves Scott's side briefly to test the strength of the heavy door that had swung shut behind The Hood as he'd left.

A few tentative shoves against the thick wrought door leaves Virgil confident that he can force this open. There are not many things that will stand in the way of the unshakable force of Virgil Tracy and one thick metal lock bar isn't going to be one of them.

Using his body as a battering ram, Virgil thinks in retrospect, might not have been the most sparkling genius of the twenty-first century - he's going to have bruises on his bruises when they come up - but there, the door is hanging open and Scott is staring questioningly almost directly at him, as if wondering what all the noise is about.

“Door’s open,” Virgil grunts, rubbing hard on his stinging shoulder and going back to his previous task of trying to persuade his brother off the perfectly good floor. “We've got to split.”

He gets Scott up with plenty of grumbling, and they stumble more than walk, but they're out in the corridor and making their way toward the door Virgil had come in through. From there it won't be very far at all to Thunderbird Two.

They don't see The Hood at all, thank goodness, but they also don't see Gordon either…

The storm has passed while they’ve been inside, clouds parting to reveal patchy blue skies and shimmering brightness, the last of the flakes are now just tumbling ever so gently toward the Earth as it clears. The snow outside is almost blindingly white, the glare of the afternoon sun glancing off its surface and making Virgil wince as he tries to adjust. Scott must notice his hesitance, but he kindly doesn't comment. At least the light isn’t being drilled uncomfortably into _his_ eyes; Virgil is more worried than bitter about that, even as he has to knuckle away the series of fat pink after images that the brightness has left.

...

Not knowing _where_ the man who’d decided to _shoot him_ is doesn’t exactly help Gordon’s nerves, but, right at this moment, the lack of The Hood’s presence _here_ is providing the aquanaut with a few valuable extra minutes to drag himself into a quiet corner and patch himself up.

Opening up the limited kit he’s carrying, Gordon finds himself relived at the contents. He grits his teeth hard and rips open the papery packed of a sterile gauze pad so he can press it swiftly to the awful, seeping gunshot wound that’s right in the middle of the muscle of his thigh. Gordon can’t help the stifled gasp that escapes him as he tries to put pressure on it. It’s burning, clawing agony and it’s all he can do to sit there, slumped, and sucking in air, as he pleads for the pain to subside. It’s more than a little tricky to maintain the pressure, his eyes watering, while he winds a roll of bandage around his leg to hold it in place and as he ties it off in a neat, tight, _oh god tight_ , knot over his uniform. His leg feels burning hot even though the rest of him is freezing cold and it’s _awful_.

He _really_ wasn’t expecting to have to use the supplies he packed back while he was on Two on _himself_ , Gordon grimaces, shoving what’s left of the kit back into the pouches of his sash.

He’s having a _really_ shitty day.

Edgy as anything, Gordon tries to keep his leg immobile as he peeks around the corner of his hiding spot. He’s aware that he really should move soon, before someone stumbles across him. Like this he’s a sitting duck. _A sprawled duck._ Whatever. He’s been constantly aware that at any moment the villain who did this might suddenly reappear and render his first aid attempts useless (there’s not much use for first aid when you’re _dead_ after all), but he seems to have found a suitable hiding place, at least for now.

Gordon takes one, deep, ragged breath to calm his racing heart, then another.

It helps less than he’d like.

He’s been listening for any telltale sounds that could be someone approaching, but so far he’s remained mercifully alone. Blood is already starting to spot on the outside of his beautiful bandage work though and all he can do about it right now is tie another strip over the top and hope for the best. If worst comes to worst, and he starts losing _too_ much blood, he can use the wire of his magnetic grapple to create a makeshift tourniquet, but Gordon _really_ hopes it doesn’t come to that. He’s marking the idea down as a definite _dangerous_ last resort, but he tries to tell himself he’ll be aboard Two again long before that ever becomes necessary.

He really hopes he will.

Leaning heavily against the wall behind him, Gordon drags himself unsteadily back onto his feet, swaying something awful as he looks up and down the dark, blood-spotted corridor to try and orientate himself. The alcove had provided good cover and so far his luck has held out, but he’s rather not press that advantage too far. With no idea where Scott or Virgil are, Gordon decides he should probably try and make his way back to Two and her far superior medical supplies ( _and absolutely no lunatics with guns)_. He’ll try and rendezvous with his missing brothers there… if he can make it that far.

A quick glance at his wrist shows that the way ahead, toward the door, is clear of heat spots on the thermal map but… there _is_ a red blob heading towards him from the opposite direction. 

It’s 50/50; it’s either his brothers or _The Hood_.

Gordon doesn’t want to stick around and find out it’s the latter. The pain of one bullet ripping through his thigh is _more_ than enough for one day. If he didn’t know better he’d swear his leg had been literally set _alight_ and he just _knows_ it’s going to do a truly horrific job of supporting any weight. The aquanaut takes a deep, fortifying breath and goes to take a step, bracing one hand against the wall and leaning heavily against the wooden panelling for extra support.

His foot meets the floor and the weight transfers and the next thing Gordon knows is white, pure torture as the muscle in his leg _spasms_ under his weight, absolute agony racing up the limb and out through his hips, firing off pain receptors in nerves and synapses he didn’t know he _had_. He’d have screamed but he can’t seem to get the air into his chest to manage it.

His visions gone crumbly with black static and Gordon knows he’s slipping. 

“ _D-Damn it_ .” Looping his free hand under the searing limb he drags it along with him as he stumbles, his fumbling fingers trying to guide him along the wall. “ _C-Come on Tracy…_ ” Every time he tries to put weight on his leg it just collapses under him, his knee buckling in outright refusal, so movement becomes an odd, awkward half-hop shuffle to get himself along. He wants to puke or pass out or at least not be _standing_ any more and as far as he can tell that's not gonna happen any time soon but it doesn't make it suck any less.

He _really_ wants to be home, curled up in bed, where no one is trying to kill him.

It’s a slow, painful process but Gordon keeps dragging himself onward. He’s getting slivers of wood cladding and all sorts of _god-knows-what_ stuck into his palm and splitered up under his fingernails from the rough bunker wall as he hobbles along but the overwhelming agony of _having been shot_ rather takes precedence over it.

He flicks sweat-damp blond hair away from where it’s fallen across his forehead and, squinting in the weak hallogen light, looks up. The door is, somehow, much nearer than it was the last time he checked and a thrill of excitement sparks through him as he realises he’s almost made it.

That is, of course, when he realises he can hear the sound of _footsteps_ behind him. The click of a pistol. The low, sinister chuckle.

“ _Going_ somewhere, Mr Tracy?”

Gordon turns slowly, wavering, to see The Hood standing there: unnervingly closer than he realised, or than he would _like_.

“Uh, yeah actually,” Gordon blusters, trying to cover the way his heart is suddenly _racing_. He can feel hot blood seeping past his crude bandage and into the fabric of his uniform as his pulse picks up dangerously. His knee is locked up and sticky with it. “I have an appointment aboard Thunderbird Two,” he explains. “Virgil gets cranky if I’m late so…” His rambling is broken off as the pistol gets jabbed right against his chest. Gordon hisses in pain as his weight tries to balance itself through his injured leg and sparks burst in front of his eyes.

It’s only sheer _willpower_ that keeps him on his feet.

“It is frustrating that my aim was evidently so off,” The Hood is saying cooly, his eyes narrowed at the wavering aquanaut. “Out of all the damnable Tracy’s, I have to say _you_ irritate me the most.” 

“What can I say, I have a magnetic personality,” Gordon comments, and he’s rewarded with yet another jab of the pistol for it.

“ _Move_ ,” the Hood commands, sneering. “You’re quite the _chatty_ one, aren’t you? I hope you’re just as chatty about your precious Thunderbirds. If not, then,” He rolls his narrow shoulders through a careless shrug, “I’m sure you’ll at least provide some excellent extra leverage against those brothers of yours.”

“You’re kidding right?” Gordon’s face is practically grey, though from worry about his brothers or from the pain, it’s not clear. “There’s no way I’m _walking_ on this thing.” 

The Hood raises one thick eyebrow contemptuously. 

“You will if you don’t want the _other one_ shot out the same way,” The madman points out. Icy fingers curl cruely, almost bruisingly tight around the young Tracy’s upper arm. The Hood all but drags Gordon bodily back towards the room in which he’d been holding Scott, uncaring of the young man’s litany of agonised complaints. The villian’s lithe stature and creased face do a lot to disguise the man’s sheer raw physical power. It’s almost unnervingly supernatural and Gordon, though he’ll swear later he was high on the pain or that it was a trick of the light, is _sure_ he sees the man’s eyes glint gold.

As they approach, though, the Hood spots the previous _very much locked_ door flung wide open and the room beyond it gaping and vacant.

“How!” he growls, rage coating his lips with spittle. The fingers around Gordon’s bicep dig spitefully between muscle into bone and sinew, vice-tight as The Hood shakes him hard enough that he nearly comes off his feet. “How do you Tracy’s _always_ manage to get away!”

Gordon, torn between elation at his brothers’ absence and the private thought that it’s usually the _Hood_ escaping _them_ , glares uneasily up at the man, deeply aware of the gun still pointed his way.

“Maybe,” Gordon just can’t help himself, “somewhere down through the generations we’re related to Houdini?”

The Hood growls as he shoves the aquanaut roughly through the door, the young man landing in a sprawling heap. A low moan escapes his lips, his vision greying out, as his weight falls heavily on his injured leg.

“Well, this might not have gone perfectly to plan.” The Hood looks down at the Tracy, running a fluttering hand over the smooth dome of his head as he calculates his escape. “But you learn quickly when dealing with you _boys_ that one must always have a Plan B.”

Brown eyes widen in fear as The Hood uses a grand, almost theatrical gesture to pull a small device from an inner pocket of his jacket. He begins to program in lines of code, evidently instructing _something_ to do... _something._

Gordon would bet his favourite submarine that that _something_ has no chance of being _anything_ good.

“Well then.” With a grand sweeping bow, and the audacity to _smile_ , he begins to back out of the room. “Enjoy your icy tomb, _Tracy_.”

The Hood leaves Gordon lying where he was thrown to the floor, the pain so /intense that he’s not able to do much more than raise his head to listen to the retreating footsteps of their nemesis running away.

It’s a sound that’s quickly joined, to his horror, by the distant rumbling roar of an _explosion_ ; complete with tremors that shake the room under Gordon’s cheek and build something icy and _terrified_ in his chest, where his heart sits racing.

Oh yeah, he knows the sound of a hundred tonnes of ice and snow rushing down a mountain toward you, even when muffled by concrete walls it's unmistakable.

_Oh god,_ Gordon Tracy realises, helpless, _I’m going to be buried alive._

  
  



	5. Chapter 5

Virgil's got an arm round Scott's back, his brother's own pulled up over his shoulders so that he can guide his sightless sibling along. Scott's totally missing the awful brilliance that is the white glare that's reflecting off the snow. It's kind of painful without the protection of a visor but Two's capable pilot is managing alright, his eyes trying their best to adjust to it.

Until, that is, Virgil finds himself stumbling, pulling Scott with him and nearly over onto the loose powdered snow.

 _Something's wrong_. The realisation pulls, panicked on his heart. _And it's not just the bright light_.

Virgil realises, suddenly, that he can literally _feel_ the earth shivering beneath them, like someone has just walked over the planet's grave. The sensation is followed by a deep cracking sound in the distance, the kind that could only come from _the splitting of ice_. It's echoes reverberate off the glacial caps, circling around the pair of them like great snowy birds.

 _Like an omen_.

"What was…?" Scott only just has the chance to angle his face unseeingly upwards, unlucky snowflakes melting on his cheeks as he tries to work out what's happening, before the cracking, _crunching_ sound of snow breaking away from the peaks has Virgil hefting him up into a fireman's carry and _ploughing_ through the drift toward Thunderbird Two.

"Virgil!" Scott hammers hard on his brother's shoulder blades, taken aback by the sudden swoop in elevation, the action only worsening his vertigo and the sudden disorientation of his roughly established sense of what's around him. "Virgil, _what the hell!?_ "

"Avalanche." The word comes out as a gasp through gritted teeth, strained by exertion. A loud rumbling from deep within the earth puts energy into Virgil's burning limbs, the ground trembling tellingly beneath them. He's more than aware that any fractures high in the icy peaks could propagate very rapidly. A large volume of snow, maybe _thousands_ of cubic meters, could absolutely be about to start moving almost simultaneously. "There's going to be an avalanche." Even as he speaks, he can _see_ a large section of snow disassociate itself completely from the mountaintop, and it begins crashing, tumbling toward them with a roar like thunder, propelled as it is by gravity. "We're right in its path and all that snow is coming _down_!"

"Gordon!" Scott has suddenly started thrashing completely unhelpfully in his grip, twisting and wriggling like a fish on a line. "We've got to go back for Gordon!"

"Stop it!" Virgil snaps, his heart torn between fear for all the three of them. "I'm getting you to Thunderbird Two first, and _then_ we'll look for Gordon, just stay _still_ , damn it, or we're both going under!"

Because, of course, Scott can't see the white, rolling mass of _death_ that's barreling down the ski slope toward them. If he could, Virgil figures he'd be putting up _far_ fewer complaints.

_Their mother had died in an avalanche._

Virgil isn't keen for them to go the same way.

It's the rush of wind that hits them first: a barrelling icy blast that almost sweeps Virgil's heavily planted feet right out from under him. Scott yelps in surprise as Virgil staggers again. The initial ferocity of the tumbling snow catches up to them as a low blast wave, a solid wall of icy air and churning flakes that slams into Virgil's shins, just as he, in turn, slams a hand down on his wrist controls to prompt the blurred shape of Thunderbird Two into lowering her platform. If the full flow of the avalanche hits them, and not just all this loose precursor powder, they're going to be buried in seconds.

Virgil knows that after an avalanche starts it'll swiftly accelerate and grow in mass and volume, picking up more and more of the loose, fresh powdered snow on the surface, and then the thicker sheets of ice, and then the dense packed snow and rock below it. The whole mountain could be currently plummeting down on top of them under the cover of the powder snow. They've probably got minutes.

They've got to get out of the avalanche's pathway.

"Oh god!" Stumbling forward, his shins now wading through the shifting, deepening drift. Virgil gets nearly knocked over for a second time, unable to balance without his arms and Scott's wriggling, panicked weight throwing him off.

He lunges for the strut of Thunderbird Two, and they stumble heavily onto the platform, Virgil clinging to both it and Scott as the snowdrift smashes into his knees hard enough to feel like it breaks something.

"Up!" Scott yells "Up! Up! Up!" The platform is rising but it feels too slow, too unsteady. The blasting cold is white and swirling all around them as the lighter powder cloud hits. It's in his eyes and ears and he can taste it on his tongue, fizzling like frozen white noise static. Scott's grip on his wrist is weakening and while Virgil tries to compensate for it, he can feel the indomitable force of the snow trying to rip them apart.

For a moment everything is cold and white and breathless then the next they're collapsing up in the warm and dry, breathing heavily, gasping, lying side by side on their backs, residue snow around them caught up on Two's platform.

Virgil is the first to laugh. A hoarse, breathless sound derived from sheer relief that they didn't just _die_.

"Oh my _god_ ," he breathes, the hitch on his voice verging on hysterical as he rides out the adrenaline wave. "Oh _hell._ "

Rolling over on his stomach he takes in the sight of Scott smiling wearily at him.

"Got e-enough, _huh_ , energy to pick up our, _huh_ , our idiot kid brother?"

He's just getting to his feet, reaching to help Scott up and safely into a chair, when Thunderbird Two gives a grand, full-body shudder all around them.

There's a whining _creak_ of metal.

Virgil almost had time for his: " _What the…_?" before the floor of Two is tipping solidly to one side, sending anything that isn't strapped down, namely her _two occupants_ , rolling hard across the sheet metal flooring.

"What's going on!?" Scott yells, curling up to try and protect himself from whatever is happening _now_. "Virgil?!"

"I'm on it." Virgil staggers upright, lunging toward the pilot's chair and Two's wide, snow-clogged view plane. "Hang tight, Scotty."

The movement of the snow seems to have dislodged Thunderbird Two, sending her sliding on her struts.

"Oh, come _on_?!" Virgil cries, affronted by the weather. "Hang onto something, Scott, I'm going to try and take us up and out of this."

"What do you expect me to hold onto?" Scott yells back at him, scrabbling around in his own personal darkness. "I can't see anything _to_ hold!" His fingers reach out blindly trying to find purchase on something, _anything_ nearby to stop himself rolling about. Where the _hell_ is the co-pilot chair in this thing? Scott takes a distracted second to lament the fact he's far too used to his _own_ bird that he's got no clue where anything is in Virgil's.

It's not like he'll be flying One any time soon though.

There's a distinct _clang_ of metal as Scott bashes his shoulder into the side of the co-pilot chair, with no idea what he just hit. He grabs it and holds on tight regardless.

Virgil curses somewhere above him, too preoccupied with _not getting them killed_ to go and help his brother. His fingers are white-knuckled on the yoke of his green behemoth as he fights to try and keep her as steady as he can. It's like surfing a wave, only he's got an almost two-tonne carrier plane instead of a board and the wave is made of a metric _hell-of-a-lot_ of slushy ice and snow, interspersed with dark spots of rubble. A huge boulder rushes past the windshield, the black, tumbling shape nearly as big as Two herself and Virgil chokes on the relief that it missed them by _inches_. The cascade races down the mountainside, tumbling over and over itself like it contains a hoard of mischievous _Barbegazi_ , the local snow demons, as it threatens to engulf the Thunderbird.

The shifting flowing ice, sped by mass and gravity, sends them barrelling down the side of the slope. There's nothing they can do but try and take off to evade the flow. Virgil grits his teeth audibly.

They've got to try, or else they'll be _buried_.

With a mighty yell, Virgil points his 'birds nose toward the sky and prays to no God but his own engines that they're gonna make it.

…

Gordon's cold. Mind-numbingly, bone shakingly cold. It's leached into his skin despite the thick layering of his thermals from the frigid concrete floor beneath him like it's a poison. He's vaguely aware he's shivering hard. His fingers are curled up near his cheek to try and keep them warm and they're spasming hard in a _tip tap tap_ of irritating motion that he can't control.

It's like thick, chilling needles of ice have decided to stick their verglas, bony fingers straight through his skin and into his muscles; glaciating his insides like beef in a fridge-freezer. It's a sharp, biting _burn_ right through him; his skin prickling with it like someone's pushing a thousand pencil-lead thin arrows into his bloodstream that lodge and snap off, agonisingly, at his joints and in his fingers.

It's quiet as anything; and except for the faintest of cruel green glows from an abandoned glowstick, it's almost completely dark. He feels his heart rate flutter and his senses prickle with adrenalin he has no functional use for. Fight or flight is no good to you when you can achieve neither.

Gordon reminds himself to stay calm as he lies still, his arms curled to his chest to try and preserve some warmth in his trunk, feeling the cold of the snow cocooned around the building leaching through. His breath blooms, cold and sticky into the air, thin layers of water vapour condensing and freezing to his cheeks. He waits, helpless, for a sign of life from the surface.

He'd tried to get up, he really had, but he's dizzy with blood loss and his leg just refuses to support his weight underneath him every time he tries to drag himself upright. The roof of the bunker had mercifully held itself up to the onslaught but that doesn't change the fact he's been entombed in however-many-feet of ice and snow with only the depleted medical supplies from his sash and the diminishing emergency glow stick that's bathed the space in faint, eerie green light. He'd tried to call John but the comm at his wrist has produced only crackling static in an unpleasant mimicry of the lack of response they'd been receiving from Scott not even hours earlier. It had taken a Herculean effort for Gordon to find one of the cold, concrete reinforced walls but it had just taken too much out of him for him to be able to stand. He now sits, slumped against it, trying to keep his sluggish limbs moving to try and ward off the cold, prickling pins and needles of sensation, that are stabbing into his extremities.

He's aware he's gasping long, hard and heavy with his neck thrown back and shiver-wheezing on each painfully drawn inhale. The hard, heavy pounding in his head is like someone, charmingly, has decided to crash a pair of cymbals against either side of his cranium and his only coherent thoughts boil down to a long, agonised groan that spills, burbling out of his mouth.

Right now would be a _really_ good time to _actually_ be related to Harry Houdini, Gordon thinks, blearily.

Because he sure can't see a way out of this.

...

Virgil's fingers are still clenched painfully tightly on the controls as he stares at the view ahead of him. Snow continues to roll past beneath them but they've made it. They're airborne. He lets out the breath he hadn't realised he'd been holding, slowly and shakily, as he tries to convince his fingers to peel away from the steering column.

"V'rgil?"

Scott's quiet voice draws his attention away from the windscreen.

"Yeah?" His voice escapes as barely more than a choked whisper so he clears his throat and tries again. "Khmm, yeah, sorry. You alright, Scott?"

"W-We made it?" Scott's wide eyes are staring toward him but they still have that terrifying blankness to them. Big brother is on his knees, hanging onto the arm of the co-pilot's chair, lopsided with the way he's got one shoulder tensed as if it hurts.

"Yeah, Scott." Virgil breathes, as if he himself can scarcely believe it, "We're up."

Scott closes his eyes, slumping heavily against the chair as the adrenaline of the whole thing burns itself out of him.

Seeing his brother collapse is just the jolt Virgil needs to get himself moving. Stabbing the control for autopilot to keep them hovering, motionless, the younger of them is at Scott's side in less than a pace, looping his arms under his brother's armpits and helping him up and into the chair.

"I got you, Scotty, I got you." Virgil works on strapping him in, shaky but tender, careful hands adjusting the harness to ensure it's supporting him properly. "You alright? Just rest now, ok?"

Scott just shakes his head, the motion giddy.

"Need to find Gordon," he mumbles, his speech slightly slurred from fatigue and the head injury. "And One."

"We will." Virgil sighs, confident that if Scott is unharmed enough to be worrying about his Thunderbird then he mustn't have hit anything too important when he got tossed around during takeoff. Virgil returns to his own seat, his heart rate still beating a tattoo well above the norm. Flicking open a comm line he tries to hail their little brother. "Gordon?" he calls, waiting in the crackling silence for any kind of response, anxiety rapidly mounting. "Gordon, are you there?" _Nothing_. "Gordon _please_ respond."

"John?" Virgil flicks the comm again, projecting instead his space-bound brother onto the holoscreen between them. "Can you remote pilot One out of the snow?" he asks, with no doubt that their astronaut has been listening in, and probably worrying himself silly listening to _all that_ up there, 22,400 miles away from the situation.

"Trying the thrusters now." To his professional credit, John doesn't ask about the avalanche he no doubt saw crashing down the mountainside toward them, or Gordon, or even about Scott's eyes, focused instead on sliding his fingers through the blue translucent screens that surround him.

He knows as well as any of them do, as years of experience have taught the spaceman, that you always deal with the quietest victim first.

They haven't heard a peep from Gordon since the avalanche.

Thrusters full of hard packed snow splutter and die as John tries to fire them, he shakes his head apologetically and a flick of his wrist ceases his attempts.

"Sorry Two, you're going to have to attach a grapple line and drag her out." Scott winces _visibly_ at that. "Shake some of that snow free and I might have a better chance of thawing through it with the engines."

John slides his screens around and blue holograms appear on Two's dashboard, illuminating the rough shape of the rocket plane where it lies trapped under the snow and rubble. It's not a pretty sight.

"How's she look?" Scott's fingers are tight on his armrests, his head angled toward Virgil even though he can't see him, as he awaits the plan.

Virgil glances over his shoulder uneasily, glad for the fact his elder brother is unaware of both the look on his face and of the scan of his beloved craft. John, on the holoscreen, scrunches his nose; glad _he_ doesn't have to be the bestower of bad news for once. Thunderbird One is buried on her side, crushed against a rocky outcrop. There'll be more than one ding to press out of her hull when this is all over.

"Well… Could be better," Virgil reports, tentatively, not wanting to outright lie to his brother. "But I'm sure we'll be able to pull her free."

Scott swallows the lump in his throat, or at least attempts to, before he asks;

"And… And Gordon?"

"Still no signal from him yet," Virgil says, his fingers dancing over the controls as he scans the area, trying to get a lock on One. "What about you, John? You had any better luck?"

There's a frown on John's face again. A frown that Virgil's sure must have set between his brows now, it's so deeply ingrained.

"I… I'm not sure," he admits, which concerns the pilot. It's so rare that John is unsure of anything. "I think there's a life sign inside that bunker, but it's… hard to get a reading, the signal's really weak."

"Alright. As soon as that flow drops its speed, I'm going back down there," Virgil says. He pulls up a graphic for it on the holoscreen, glad to see that it seems to be decelerating already.

"Can I do anything?" Scott asks, not sounding overly hopeful, but still wanting to help. His sightless eyes are wide and shining as they look somewhere vaguely over Virgil's left shoulder.

Virgil takes a precious second just to look at him. Big brother is on edge, his face dirty and still caked with dried blood down one side but deeply creased with anxiety. His fingers haven't relented in their death grip on his seat. Virgil can see the frustration at his helplessness building in the tension of his shoulders. If there's one thing Scott Tracy hates being, it's unable to help someone.

Especially when it's his own brother.

"Keep the comm open," Virgil suggests kindly. "Listen out for Gordon for us, ok?"

Scott nods, determined. "Yeah," he says, voice strained. "Yeah, I can do that."

"We'll get him out." Virgil leans over and places a hand on Scott's shoulder, giving it a gentle but reassuring squeeze. Scott jumps almost a mile at the sudden contact, though he recovers it well. Virgil feels a bit guilty about that, and he spares a second to give his brother a good once over, now that the panic of getting out of the snow is over. Virgil frowns, noticing the way Scott's fingers are clenched in his lap. They look considerably redder than they should; raw, curled and slightly swollen.

 _Frostbite?_ Shoot, that's going to need treating immediately, or Scott could be looking at permanent damage to his fingers. Dread swells in Virgil's chest. Patches of his exposed face are looking patchy and red like they might've suffered a similar fate.

Virgil curses to himself, then redirects his annoyance toward the Hood who'd interrupted his earlier assessment of his brother's condition. He straightens up and looks outside at the slow, tumbling remains of the avalanche that, he assumes, has buried their little brother.

They need to prioritise.


	6. Chapter 6

“Right, John,” Virgil prioritises. “Can you try and remotely retrieve One using Two’s grapple lines?” He directs his sibling. “It might be tricky to get a lock but if we can at least make a start on her recovery, it’ll save time. I don’t want to hang around too long when we don’t know what kind of condition Gordon might be in. Scott’s fingers are frozen and the temperature under that lot has to be even worse. Gordon’s got our cold weather gear on but it wasn’t really intended for...” _For being buried._ He trails off.

The survival time for anyone completely buried in an avalanche is fifteen minutes, with chances dwindling significantly after five. If Gordon really is trapped under that lot then _time_ is not something they have the luxury of.

"On it," John reports from up on Five, pulling up the necessary programs with a flick of his wrist. Two's engines roar underneath them as she responds, whirling them around in the sky toward the abandoned craft.

"Alright then, Scott,” Virgil quickly assesses, dealing with the problem right in front of him, the one he can do something _about,_ first. “Give us your hands. Let me have a look at the damage so we can both go see," he cringes slightly at his choice of words, “where Gordon has gotten to.”

Scott raises both hands in the general direction of his brother, a bit sheepish to have attention drawn to his swollen, painful looking fingers. The skin is raw and red, darkening towards a blistered bruise-ish purple toward the tips. If Scott were honest, it feels like the fine bones in each digit have been replaced with red hot wires and there are pins and needles of sensation driving little sharp spikes of agony into his rubbery skin every time he even _slightly_ moves them. A man less worried about others, with no other priorities than himself, would probably be in tears of pain by now. The end of his nose, his chin, lips and the curves of his cheeks are also reddened in much the same way and are not much less painful. He doesn’t think he could force a smile onto his face right now even if someone were to offer him a good _hug_ from his space-bound sibling.

There’s a moment of struggle as Scott tries to hold his injured hands out for Virgil to have a look. Shockwaves of agony race from fingertip to shoulder, spasming the muscles of his arm (not helped by the wallop his shoulder took against the chair just now). He can _feel_ his pulse throbbing rhythmically in time with his heartbeat in every swollen digit. Virgil takes one of his hands very, very gently, supporting the weight of his arm and rotating his brother’s wrist ever so slightly to get a good assessment of the damage.

“Right.” Suddenly, Virgil lets go and Scott is left all alone in the darkness again. Distantly, he hears a loud, swooping, _whooshing_ noise that he recognises as John firing Two’s magnetic grapple lines and a _shinggg_ as they connect. He’ll never admit it made him jump.

“Virgil?” Scott calls out, hearing his brother’s footsteps move away from him. His eyes dart around, uselessly trying to find where the younger Tracy has gone.

“I’m just getting some of Brains’ frostbite gloves for you, don’t worry,” Virgil explains, sounding distant. This elicits a small groan from the other man, displeased with the idea of having to manoeuvre his painful, stiff fingers into such a thing. “And a warm, damp flannel for your face.”

Yet again, their scientist friend had proved he could anticipate almost any need they might have. Knowing rescue workers can be more prone to frostbite due to the potential for working in cold conditions for longer periods, he’d invented special gloves that treat frostbitten hands by pumping warm water over them within the glove.

“I’m gonna put these on you and you’re not to take them off, you understand me?” Virgil is a cool, confident presence back at his side, “I know they’re weird and not all that comfortable, but right now? I don’t even care.”

Scott nods numbly, wincing something awful and biting on his lip almost hard enough to draw blood as Virgil helps him slide his cold-mangled fingers into the gloves. He lays the warm, damp cloth over his brother’s face, covering the worst of the cold burns to help thaw the skin and by the time he’s finished, Scott is breathing hard, the sound interrupted only by little huffs as he shivers.

“How cold are you feeling?” Virgil worries, reaching out a hand to test how damp his brother’s suit has gotten from the melted snow they were both powdered in. Virgil knows his own isn’t exactly keeping him toasty right now, but Scott’s much colder than he is from his extended stay in that bunker. It makes the dampness of his suit worrying. “You probably need a change of clothes,” he decides, hoping fervently that they have time for this. “Think you can manage to get on sweatpants and a hoodie?” 

Scott nods, his head wobbly, but he also holds up his thickly-gloved hands in a silent indication that it’s going to be a real struggle to get anything on, or off, over them. Virgil scrunches his nose, gently guides Scott’s hands back to rest in his lap, then rummages about for a pair of very sharp thick fabric scissors. 

“I’m going to cut a line up your suit arms.” Brains can frown at him for destroying Scott’s suit later, but he’s not got much other choice. It’s going to be a struggle to get through the kevlar reinforced material as it is. “We’ll peel it back from there so you don’t have to tug it over your wrists.” Virgil gently unclips the restraints he’d put across his brother and he’s almost glad that Scott’s sash is missing so that he doesn’t have to lift it off over his head.

It does worry him as to where the top-secret, high spec rescue equipment Scott carries might have ended up… _Including the remote controls of Thunderbird One…_

They’ll have to get Brains on changing the system as soon as they get back to the Island.

Scott is nodding again, giving tired permission, and Virgil begins to slice a neat, efficient line through the heavy duty fabric from wrist to shoulder, then up the side of his collar so that it neatly separates the front half of his suit from the back. All the while he’s very careful not to knock his brother’s hands. The skin it reveals is a greyish white, the bruising on his shoulder standing out livid against the pallor, Scott’s muscles tense under its surface, and Virgil winces sympathetically, rubbing his spare, much warmer hand over his sibling’s arms as he works to try and warm him up a bit.

“Right, let me grab you those clothes.”

Letting Scott get the rest of his own suit off, with some struggle without the use of his hands, but much more modesty than Virgil’s constant presence allows, Virgil goes and fishes out one of his own big, warm hoodies, deciding, satisfied, that the sleeves are by far wide enough to get on over Scott’s gloved fingers.

Returning to find Scott in his shorts kicking the last of his suit off from his ankles, Virgil then helps his brother tug the green fabric of his hoodie carefully on over Scott’s head, avoiding the bandage around his skull. He then quickly helps Scott pull the sweatpants up to his hips, and settles him back in the chair, far warmer and cosier than before.

Virgil settles the cloth back in place on his face from where it was discarded and buckles him back into the seat with a smirk, feeling kind of like he’s strapping in an overgrown toddler. 

By the time Scott’s changed and settled, the drifting, tumbling snow outside seems to have stopped. 

“Grapple line attached,” John reports, his voice tense with something thin and worried that’s never usually present on rescues. “I’m pulling One up now… _or trying to_.” They almost don’t catch the muttered little addition on the end there. “She won’t fit in Two’s pod, so we’ll have to carry her underneath.”

“Don’t you scratch her,” Scott warns wearily, fully aware that while John is just as capable as any of them, he’s by far the least experienced in the field. If it was one of their younger brothers he’d be threatening them with having to buff One until she’s shiny and perfect again, but that does seem a little harsh on the skinny spaceman, who’s only doing his best. “Sorry… You can do this, John.” The effect of Scott’s reassurance is dampened by the fact he looks like an exotic dancing lady under his face cloth, and Virgil, beside him, tries his best not to laugh. It’s an almost surreal feeling in such drastic conditions.

“I’m going to configure a pod to get through all that snow to look for Gordon.” Virgil pats a hand down on Scott’s shoulder in a clear indication that he should stay put. Even blinded, he’s expecting resistance, expecting _demands_ that he too should come along to rescue their younger brother, but, surprisingly, Scott doesn’t put up a fight. Virgil swallows the worry rising in him at that. Perhaps big brother feels he would be more of a _hindrance_ than a help. That’s going to be hard on him, moving forward, Virgil worries. “I’ll keep you both posted.”

Virgil’s legs carry him down to the hold on autopilot, and he’s assembling a small pod with the heat cone before he really gets the chance to realise what he’s doing. A little shell shocked, he climbs aboard and John, a tiny hologram at his wrist, gives him the nod to remotely lower the platform onto the snow. 

John’s got grapple lines firmly attached to One and pauses in his efforts to pull her out so he give Virgil his full attention as he makes his way out onto the loose, skiddy powdered snow. Without a word, the atmosphere strained, John flicks a map of the area onto Virgil’s screen, the weak heat signatures he’s picked up from the now buried bunker glowing a worrying greenish orange instead of a warm, healthy red.

Virgil fires up the heat cone in silence, John tense and quiet beside him. It’s a relief not to be doing this alone, even if it is a different brother than usual by his side.

_Please, please be ok, Gordon._

The comm line John has left open in the hopes that they’ll hear something from their aquanaut crackles emptily, eerily, into the space between them as Virgil presses the heat cone to the snow and a cloud of whirling, hissing steam engulfs the entirety of the craft in billowing white.

“Careful, Virgil,” John advises, breaking the silence as his fingers linger over fracture lines on his holoscreens, highlighting potential dangers for his brother. “The snow structure hasn’t had time to settle, it’s very unsteady.”

“Noted.” Virgil ploughs on regardless, angling the pod down into the tunnel he’s melting through the loose, shifting snow. “How’s my descent angle looking?”

“Good,” John confirms, then there’s a beat of silence between them, lengthening as Virgil digs. The crunching sizzle of pressing a hot implement on fresh snow becomes the loudest thing in the pod. A warning light bleeps. Virgil corrects his angle by four degrees. The light blinks off.

“I’m going to come home after this.” John suddenly says, his voice pleading permission. “As… As soon as you don’t need me up here. Eos can run things for a while, especially if Gordon’s...” He trails off not wanting to voice the awful thing he’s thinking.

“Gordon’s gonna be fine,” Virgil says, simply because he refuses to accept any alternative. “I’m nearing the bunker doors now, think I can break through them like this?” He’s going to try regardless of what John says, so it’s lucky all he gets back is a non-committal hum.

The tried and tested _Jeff-Tracy-hit-it-until-it-works_ method has never failed him yet. 

And it doesn’t fail him now.

The bunker, once the doors have been smashed open by the pointed nose of the pod, seems to be mercifully snow-free inside. Beyond the door and the column of pale bluish light from the hole Virgil has dug, the space is dark and cold and quiet as death. The fine hairs at the back of Virgil’s neck prickle with a feeling much like he’d get had he just rolled into a tomb.

The pilot takes a deep, fortifying breath, his eyes flicking down to the tiny figure of John, who gives Virgil a reassuring nod, and he heaves himself up out of his seat so that he can climb out of the pod.

Virgil picks his way inside the groaning concrete structure. Anything that was standing when the avalanche hit is now tossed across the floor. Bookcases and clothes racks full of old ski gear form a chaotic obstacle course for Virgil to dance his way around. He tries his best to make his way quickly through the building, honing in on the little dot that John has provided that they hope represents their brother. The further inside he gets, the darker it becomes, and he flicks the switch for the high-intensity searchlight at his shoulder to turn it on.

A beam of white illuminates a circle on the floor, revealing dust and grime and yet more fractured debris. Making his way down a wood-clad corridor and around a locker room full of toppled cabinets, Virgil finds himself face to face with the thick metal doors he’d broken the bolt from during his and Scott’s escape, and, with some effort, his achy shoulder straining, he shoves the door fully aside so that he can see inside.

Then, there, bathed in the harsh beam of light from his shoulder torch is a small lump of a blue-clad figure, sprawled on his side. The blond mop of spiked hair is unmistakable as Gordon’s.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Art by me (lenle-g) is also on tumblr at: https://lenle-g.tumblr.com/post/610962236685549568/snow-blind-chapter-five-i-got-you-scotty-i Please don't repost, steal or pin it, thanks <33


	7. Chapter 7

"John!” Virgil calls out. “John! I've found him!"

There's a loud noise across the comms as John lets out all the breath he was holding at once.

"Oh, thank god." Thick tension has yet to leave Five's Operator’s voice. "Scott, Virgil's found him." There's a _click click_ of John changing over voice channels, but Virgil doesn't get to hear their older brother’s response. "No, I don't know, hold on." There's another click as John switches the comm line back to just them. "How badly is he hurt, Virgil?"

"Unconscious." Virgil is picking his way quickly over the uneven ground, trying to get to his sibling’s side. Taking quick stock of the filthy little room, he notices there's quite a lot of rubble that's appeared since last he was here and, looking up, a big black crack has appeared in the ceiling; the sturdy concrete beginning to split under the weight of all of the snow above them. He's going to have to work fast. "Gordon?” he calls to the little, limp blue figure. “Can you hear me? Gords?"

There's no visible response from the younger Tracy, who appears totally senseless.

"Heya, Gordo," Virgil finally skids to a halt at his brother's side, dropping heavily to his knees. Ever so gently he reaches out and taps the side of the slack little face, trying to provoke a reaction. The searchlight closely illuminates the space, revealing dirt in Gordon’s blond hair and that same awful frosty redness to his cheeks, chin and nose that Scott's had developed where they'd been exposed to the cold air. Lying on this heat leeching floor will have done his internal body temperature no favours, Virgil thinks, worry gnawing sharply at his chest. Stripping off one glove and pressing his fingers to his brother’s _bloody freezing_ pulse point, he finds the thready, slow thump of the kid’s heart as it struggles to pump blood that’s so cold around his little body. Blood that’s been escaping through that gunshot wound. “Come on, Gordy…”

Gordon's golden eyelashes flutter and Virgil's heart skips a beat. 

"There you are," he breathes, as Gordon's face screws up and he produces a long, mumbly moan. "Wakey wakey, Gordcakes, time to get up, yeah?"

"Ow," Gordon manages blearily, squinting at the outline of his brother around the beam of the high intensity searchlight that feels like it’s trying to burn a hole in his retina. "What h't mey?" he asks, voice very slurred. He's not shivering and Virgil knows that's a bad sign, not something to be relieved about.

"Avalanche," Virgil confides through gritted teeth, working quickly to check his brother over. 

He’s ever so gentle and cautious as he works. He’s well aware that any excessive, vigorous or jarring movements could trigger cardiac arrest in someone hypothermic. Nothing feels broken or out of place though, so that’s good. His spine still feels normal (or as normal as Gordon’s ever will) as everything seems to be in line as Virgil softly probes his brother’s weak back.

"Oh… Tuh-tuh Hood set-t it off." Gordon's fingers curl weakly into his brother’s arm, seeking support. His gloves mean they seem far better protected than Scott's were, at least.

_What kind of idiot sets off an avalanche on a mountain range?!?_ Virgil grits his teeth, furious. If anything they’re lucky they were the only ones in the range of the flow. He couldn't imagine how badly things could have gone if they'd been near one of the ski resorts or villages.

He dusts ice from his brother’s cheeks and hair, noting how Gordon’s lips are a pale blueish colour and that he’s breathing in short, shallow gasps. The thermal suit seems to have protected his trunk and arms _,_ but then, working his way down toward Gordon’s feet, Virgil comes across the dark staining and the crude bandage around Gordon's pant leg with mild horror.

That's a _lot_ of blood for one person to have lost.

_Ok, ok,_ he needs to work faster.

"I'm going to have to carry you, alright?" Virgil insists. Dizzy with blood loss, Gordon knows he's not going to be much of a help getting out of here, but he squeaks indignantly about it all the same as he's hoisted up into his brother's strong arms. "The pod’s not far," Virgil reassures, cradling his co-pilot close so that Gordon’s blond head rests neatly against his warm shoulder. Gordon gives him a small, pained sounding groan in return. “Let’s get you out of here, yeah?”

“M’good t’go.” Gordon almost chuckles, breathy and weak. He curls his arms loosely around Virgil’s thick neck for extra support, clinging close to the reassuring wall of warm muscle that forms his elder sibling. “Good ridd’nce, creepy b’sment. I w’nt miss you.” Virgil can’t help the bark of laughter that escapes him. _Hell,_ if it isn’t good to have Gordon back.

“The structural integrity of that bunker’s looking poor, Virgil.” John’s voice breaks through the crackling silence on the comms. His hologram is missing, likely due to the video signal struggling to get through the thick layers of distorting ice and snow, but it’s comforting to hear from him all the same. “You two need to find the exit.” 

“On it, John.” The minimap at Virgil’s wrist seems to have gone much the same way John’s hologram has, but retracing his steps should be fairly simple. “You and Brains need to take a look at strengthening the signal on the comms so it can get through something like this.”

“Top of my to-do list,” John crackles, as Virgil carries Gordon over the rubble and out the door he’d shoved aside. It’s a harrowing trudge back to the pod and Gordon goes worryingly quiet, curled in his arms. He tries his best to use his own body to shield the kid from the cold as much as possible. “How you doing, Crabsticks?” He jostles his brother just a little as he heaves him up and into the back seat of the pod, clambering in quickly after him and sealing the sliding roof shut to keep out the icy air. A flick of his fingers puts the heaters on a slow, steady setting. _Defrost time_.

“M’ok,” Gordon promises, his voice far weaker than Virgil would ever like. Big brother shakes out one of the emergency silver mylar blankets they keep folded into neat little squares in one of the Pod’s pouches, and neatly tucks it around him. He’s started trembling, _finally_ , in big, full body shivers that bounce his head from side to side and make him completely incapable of doing up his own seatbelt. Virgil leans across to do it for him, and he must be fussing too much because their aquanaut scowls at him and languidly swats his hands away. “Step on it w-will ya bro? S’freezing.”

“Uh-huh.” Virgil shoots him a sceptical look, under the blanket and heaters, before turning around and strapping himself back in. “John?” he calls out to their spaceman. “We’re beginning our ascent now. Screens look like some of the snow has collapsed back into the tunnel I dug, but I kept a shallow enough decent angle that it should be simple enough to re-melt it on our way out.”

“FAB,” John replies, sounding like he’s busy with something on the other end. “See you at the surface, Scott’s worrying himself silly about where you both are.”

“Of course he is,” Virgil snorts, and he can only imagine the answering smile on the astronaut’s face. “Two out.”

...

Driving up the tunnel, then the ramp into Two and settling the module neatly in the safety of her belly goes without a hitch. Getting a cold, lethargic little brother out of it and into Two’s specialised little med room is a little trickier. Gordon doesn’t seem particularly aware of where each of his limbs are at any one time, and the leg with the gunshot wound simply refuses to support any weight, so it’s not dissimilar to trying to grapple a confused, half-frozen octopus back into the safety of its tank.

“How wet is your suit?” he asks, looking skeptically at Gordon’s cold-weather IR gear as he helps him get his boots off. Scott’s had been bad and he strongly suspects Gordon’s is worse. “You’ll be better off out of it if it’s holding cold water.” 

Teeth chattering, Gordon nods, his neck almost comically floppy as he agrees that that’s a good idea. He doesn’t think he can get the fabric off over the pulsing, burning bullet hole in his leg though, and he expresses as much, so Virgil has a rummage in their kit to re-discover the thick fabric scissors he’d used on Scott. Ever so carefully, big brother cuts a line up the side of Gordon’s pant leg and makes two more long cuts all the way around the circumference of his thigh, either side of the awful seeping wound, so that he can then, as gently as possible, peel the material away. As it's revealed he finds his brother's skin is bathed in blood, slick and slippery from where it's still spilling out of the gory little wound. Gordon so obviously tries his best not to cry out as the fabric comes away that Virgil almost cries himself about how dang _brave_ his little brother is.

“You’re alright, Gordy, it’s going to be fine, don’t worry.” Virgil finds himself mumbling a litany of constant reassurances, working as quickly and efficiently as possible. “It’s ok, you’ve got this, it’s all alright.” Gunshot wound exposed to the open air Gordon whines, low and pitiful in the back of his throat. “We’re gonna fix you right up, ok, bud?”

Big brother then helps him strip off the remains of his suit, leaving him in just the shorts he has on underneath. Trying to keep him as warm as possible, Virgil assists in pulling a soft, dry t-shirt over Gordon’s head and he drapes a new thicker, weighted shock blanket about his brother’s shoulders. There are bloody fingerprints at the hem from his gloves, but they have bigger issues than that right now.

Gordon shivers violently, his teeth clacking together.

“I’m just gonna see to this hole in your thigh, then we can totally bundle you up in blankets, alright?” Virgil reassures him, keeping an eye on Gordon’s low, shallow breathing and the pale, bluish hue to his icy, translucent skin. _It doesn’t look good_. Pressing a thumb against the top of Gordon’s bare, cold foot, he tests to see how long it takes for blood to rush back to the area and the results are... worrying. The skin stays inhumanly pale, the blood far too slow to creep back in, little brother’s circulatory system struggling heavily in the cold. Virgil knows he needs to prioritise again. 

Quietly, he tightly wraps Gordon’s bullet wound, trying to prevent him from losing any more blood. It’s not a clean, through-and-through injury though; they’re going to need to dig that bullet out sooner rather than later, but Virgil decides he needs to get on top of the hypothermia before putting his brother out for any major surgery. With his internal body temperature so low, it would be far more dangerous than it’s worth. He explains everything he’s doing to Gordon as he does it, trying to keep him aware of everything that’s going on.

Little brother is starting to look pretty hazy.

“Think you can give me a pain rating?” he prompts, with a light tap to the edge of little brother’s jaw. He knows full well that Gordon’s sense of what _pain_ feels like is violently skewed from any normal person’s perception of it by the hydrofoil accident he suffered in his late teens, but it’s worth an ask.

“Mmm… maybe a seven,” Gordon confesses, reluctant and sluggish, and Virgil nearly curses. A Gordon seven would probably be right off the top of anyone else’s scale.

For now, Virgil just gives him a quick, efficient shot of morphine, not wanting to overdose his little brother or make him feel sick. It’s a tricky thing to calculate how much to give him when he’s so cold, and his circulation is so poor but Brains will know what’s best when they get back to the Island. Virgil just wants to manage it for his little brother for now, not liking the idea of him being in pain, despite his suggestion it’s not as bad as it clearly is.

It’s hard to estimate just how much blood Gordon has lost but Virgil strongly suspects his wooziness and the paleness of his face is not just from the cold. There’d been an awful lot of crimson staining the thick fabric of his pants and more besides it on the dirty bunker floor.

“Alright for me to put an IV in?” He smoothes stray hairs off Gordon’s face, analysing his distant gaze worriedly. “We’ve got to give you back some of that blood you’ve lost, ok?”

“S’a good idea.” Gordon nods, his head flopping around like a puppet whose strings have been cut. Virgil gives his shoulder a supportive squeeze, then goes to get out the blood transfusion kit.

He cleans the crook of his brother’s elbow with alcohol wipes, then begins work on trying to carefully and gently slide the clean, fresh IV needle into the fine, tricky veins there. Its sharp, foreign intrusion, a stinging pinch as the needle slides unpleasantly under his skin. He winces. Virgil seems to be having a hard time trying to find his veins, even with the tight pressure of a tourniquet round Gordon’s upper arm, his skin is so cold that the veins have shrunk to almost the width of the little needle itself. Virgil finds himself apologising over and over as it takes him three tries, warming the skin with his hands between goes, to get it right. The needle finally in, he gently tapes over it to hold it in place, giving his little brother a worried, apologetic smile as he does.

It’s a small, stinging throb that seems minute in comparison to all the _ow_ but nonetheless Gordon finds it bothers him, making his whole elbow feel stiff and achy.

“Feel ok?” Virgil checks, kind of redundantly, as he links up a bag of the synthesised blood they keep in stock to the plastic tubing and hangs it on a stand high above his brother’s head to let gravity drip feed it into his veins. Gordon doesn’t really reply to him, maybe to stop himself being insulting, and Virgil grimaces. “Sorry, it’ll start helping soon though, I promise.”

That taken care of, Virgil sets up a small bio-monitor, a VSM, and goes to raid their stock for one of the warm, dry first-aid compresses they keep on hand. It’s a flat, plastic, fluid-filled bag that warms up to a mild heat when squeezed. He activates it and goes to tuck it neatly against the wall of Gordon’s chest, focusing on gradually heating up his core. 

Gordon’s face screws up as it meets his bare chest though. There’s a couple of second’s pause as the craved heat bleeds through the plastic wrapping and then the aquanaut gasps aloud, beginning to wriggle in place like he’s trying to dislodge it.

“Whoa, you ok?” Virgil checks, instantly alarmed by the extreme reaction. He presses his fingers to his brother’s pulse, manually counting beats like he’s terrified something has gone _horribly wrong._ Gordon winces painfully, shifting the pack further around the surface of his bare chest to try and distribute its seeping heat. It’s like his body is craving the heat, like he _needs_ it and he knows he needs it, but it’s just _too much_ for the terribly cold skin to bear.

“It’s burning,” Gordon chokes, his voice weak as his uncomfortable shifting becomes more urgent, now trying not just to spread its heat but to move the searing pack completely off his skin. “Virgil, it _hurts_.”

“ _Damn it_ , sorry, hold on.” Panicked fingers fish the warm pack back out from the layers of blanket. “Sorry, I should have realised. You’re just too cold to apply heat directly.” Virgil bites his lip hard enough to bring blood rushing toward the surface, making the pink of the skin deepen toward red. He scrabbles about for some kind of cloth to wrap the pack in and comes up with what might have once been an old tea towel from near the little metal sink in the room. He wraps the heat pack carefully in it, so that the fabric layer will allow the heat to seep through more gradually, and provide less of a shock to his brother’s icy skin.

“Mmm, thanks,” Gordon manages as big brother slides the pack back into his bundle and tosses another thick, woollen blanket over his legs, trapping the warmth between layers. He doesn’t think he needs to hook the kid’s veins up to a supply of warmed, intravenous solution of saline as well to help warm up his newly replenished blood, but if Gordon’s core temperature doesn’t start making good progress upwards soon he’ll reconsider it.

“If I make you a hot drink with one of the blackcurrant sugar tablets, think you’ll be able to drink it?” Virgil asks, knowing the fastest way to bring someone’s core temperature up is to give them a warm, sweet, non-alcoholic, non-caffeinated beverage. They keep packets of little high-glucose saturated capsules in a couple of flavours that can be crunched or that dissolve in hot water on board for just such a reason.

Gordon nods and Virgil busies himself with doing just that. When he comes back to his brother’s side, mug in hand, he finds him slumped back against the raised headboard of the gurney, struggling to stay alert. He notices Virgil’s approach blearily and reaches out to accept the mug tentatively from him, wincing a little as the hot ceramic meets his cold fingers. Hands trembling, he carefully cradles it close to his chest, taking small, shaky sips. 

He practically radiates exhaustion.

“I’m going to go grab Scott before he starts pulling his hair out,” he informs their sleepy brother. “You hang tight for a sec, ok? We won’t be long.”

Gordon mumbles something _very_ convincingly coherent in response, and Virgil frowns at him.

“Don’t go to sleep, Gordy,” he warns, reaching out and gently tapping at his brother’s cheek. “You’ve got to keep your internal metabolic activity as high as possible.” Gordon mumbles at him again and Virgil scowls. “I’m serious, Fishcake.” He taps him again, trying to get him to look at him and successfully provoking a fluttering open of those honey brown eyes. He curls his hands briefly over Gordon’s where he’s holding the perilously teetering mug, and giving them a little squeeze to remind him to keep it steady. “People burn fewer calories, and therefore produce less heat when they’re asleep, yeah? I don’t want your breathing, heart rate and blood flow to slow down any _more._ ”

“Yeah… yeah, sorry,” Gordon manages, trying his best to look more alert. Virgil reaches out and wipes a smudge of dirt from his forehead with a hum of worry.

“I’ll keep an eye on him.” John pops up at his side, listening in as always and astute to Virgil’s reluctance to leave their little brother. “Go see to Scotty.” 

“Thanks, John.” Virgil pushes a slightly stressed hand back through his hair, finds it sweaty, and claps the other hand on Gordon’s shoulder in a clear indication of _hang in there_ , before he makes his way back up to the cockpit to retrieve their big brother.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this update took a little longer, I was having a lot of Photoshop problems but wanted to get that in there! Lemmie know what you guy's think!!! Art by @lenle-g (me! haha!) please don't re-post, pin or steal, thanks guys! <33


	8. Chapter 8

He finds Scott curled into himself in the co-pilot's chair with John's hologram; a concerned, weightless interloper hovering nearby. The warm flannel is discarded on the floor and Scott's face is wet with tears of pain, but he stoically wipes them away with his elbow, avoiding the use of his thickly gloved fingers, as he hears Virgil coming up the stairs.

"Hey, Scotty." Voice edged with his own tiredness, Virgil sinks down into a crouch at big brother's side, his knees complaining something vicious about the abuse, though he detachedly ignores them. Ever so tenderly, he reaches out to take Scott's uninjured shoulder, making sure that his brother can _feel_ where he is. Two's pilot rubs his thumb in gentle circles over the tight, tense muscle he finds, discovering that Scott is cold and shivery to the touch even through Virgil's thick green hoodie. "Think you feel up to me having a look at that head wound of yours?"

"How's Gordon?" Scott asks, by way of an answer. He turns his damp, sightless eyes and tear-stained, blood-caked face in Virgil's general direction and Virgil has to physically restrain himself from reacting aloud at it. He'd known, of course, that it was this bad but with the high-paced adrenaline rush of it all, he's barely had time to take in the bigger picture.

Scott, before him, draws in a shuddering breath and finds that it feels like the whole world around them shudders as well.

 _Damn it. It shouldn't do that_ , _it..._

"Whoa!" He's very lucky that Virgil's there to neatly catch him as Scott's internal gyroscope fails and he overbalances, tipping forward.

 _Is this how John feels after a stint in space?_ Scott angles his head up toward his present younger brother, disoriented; feeling all giddy in a way that's not just his lack of sight.

 _Blood loss_ _? Possibly severely_ \- Virgil concludes, cautiously settling Scott back so that he's as comfortable as possible in the co-pilot chair. _He needs an IV and a fresh bag for transfusion as soon as possible._

"Gordon?" Big brother asks again, increasingly anxious. "Where is he?"

"In the med room, where else?" Virgil frowns, "What, you didn't think I left him out in the _snow_ did you?" He rolls his eyes at the overprotective idiot that is their older sibling. "Gords is mostly just really cold. He'll be fine," Two's pilot reassures him, exchanging a _look_ with the little blue representation of John in the process - who raises both eyebrows in silent agreement that it's a good idea _not_ to give Scott all the details. As such, Virgil doesn't dwell on the tricky bullet hole in their little brother's thigh or the hard time he'd had fitting his IV and trying to get him warm.

 _It's_ _2062_ _._ Virgil sighs, trying to shake off some of the stress. _Why do they have to get the one and only maniac still stupid enough to use a real, bullet-firing gun in this day and age?_

"Gordon's doing his best to stay awake," Their spaceman reports from his tiny hologram, because of _course_ John's multitasking and has eyes on _everything_. "BMP steady, core temperature coming up. He could probably use some more company than me soon though I think I might be boring him..." He trails off.

Virgil laughs at him, half amused, half _relieved_.

"Right." In an attempt to distract their eldest brother from his worries about their younger, Virgil decides he's got time to do a cleanup on that awful, dirty head wound and to make a quick assessment of _whatever's_ wrong with Scott's eyes before they head down to Two's medical bay. Virgil gently takes his brother's chin and angles his face toward him. "I'm going to put some saline on this to clean it up and to get the worst of the grit out," Virgil explains, watching as Scott grits his teeth, preparing for it to hurt.

 _The saline shouldn't sting too much,_ he thinks, as he gently begins to trickle salt water over the wound. But, as he cups his hand around Scott's eyes so that it doesn't pour into them, he knows it won't be _pleasant_ … The last thing they want is the site to scab over with grit still inside, so even though Virgil feels awful about it, it's got to be done. He's going to need tweezers for removing some of these bigger bits though.

Ever so carefully, he works on removing the worst of the dirt and grime the wound has picked up, wondering, quietly, how exactly this all could have happened. The water that washes down the side of Scott's face has turned a red, rusty colour; as has the cloth Virgil has had pressed around the wound to seep most of it up.

"You're good at this," Scott reluctantly compliments, his voice hoarse as he breaks the silence. He's finding it odd to be on the receiving end of Virgil's rescue work for once. "It's almost like this is your job or something."

Virgil laughs softly at him for that as he unpackages a bottle of disinfectant.

"I'm gonna clean this up with iodine now. Need to make sure it doesn't get infected," he tells him, fingers gently cradling his brother's jaw. "This _is_ going to sting, but I'll make it quick ok?"

Scott grits his teeth again in reply but, to his credit, he manages to keep quiet during the application of the thin, brown liquid, even though it gives him an awful, scalding flash of pain and little white lights explode across the darkness that is his world. At least Virgil is quick about it.

"Geezus," Scott hisses, blank eyes watering again as Virgil finishes mopping up. " _Ow_."

"Suck it up," Virgil tells him, not unkindly, pressing a gauze pad over the seeping, split skin and winding a roll of bandage carefully around Scott's skull to hold it in place. He smooths the material out with his fingers, checking the fit and tucking stray strands of his brother's dirty brown hair neatly under it. They all _really_ need a shower. "Now," he moves on, "What's up with your eyes? When did this blindness start?"

"I think it's related to the head wound." Scott sounds glum. "I don't really remember..."

 _Unsurprisingly,_ Virgil thinks.

"I've got memories of being in One, talking to John." It's clear by the scrunchiness of his face that it's a struggle to recall. "Then I was outside in the snow and I couldn't hear him anymore. I remember thinking that was odd…" Scott takes a heavy breath. "There was a figure out in the snow... I was there to rescue a missing skier, but it wasn't them, there _was_ no skier, it was… Well, I guess it was _The Hood_." Scott frowns, his stiff fingers flexing painfully towards being fists inside the gloves. Concerned, Virgil gently takes them both and smooths them out again, noting the pained creases that develop around his brother's eyes at the action.

"I lost sight of him in the snow," Scott continues, "but then something hit me over the head and after that… I've just got blackness." His shoulders roll through the motion of a shrug, one side considerably stiffer than the other. He's going to have quite a bruise where he whacked it against the co-pilot chair earlier. "Next thing I remember is waking up, uh, wherever it was you found me, and everything was..." One hand escapes Virgil's grip to wave thickly through the air, the motion of his fingers stiff and sludgy; like they're moving through treacle. "Just this constant darkness."

"You've had absolutely nothing?" Virgil checks, sounding worried. "How about if I do this?" He fishes a small flashlight from one of his sash pockets and clicks it on. He cups his brother's cheek, angling Scott's head toward the light, which he shines in each of his brother's eyes in turn so that he can watch for any reaction in the wide-blown pupils. "Anything?"

"Maybe…" Scott frowns. "There's, like, a smudgy blurry white patch. Is that a torch?" Optimism creeps into big brother's voice. "That's better than nothing, right?"

It is reassuring that he can identify that much but Virgil, gently tilting Scott's head again so he can get a good, proper look at those baby blues, would sure like a lot _more_ improvement than that. Scott's pupils are massively dilated, as they try to compensate for the pressure and let in as much light as possible, and the blue of his irises have been reduced to thin, disconcerting rings around the circumference of them. It looks a bit alien.

There's no obvious damage to the retinas, pupils or lenses though, which, for Virgil, confirms the theory that the bash he took to the skull must be responsible.

"Mmm," Virgil replies, non-committal. "I think your head injury has created some amount of trauma-related swelling, that seems to be putting pressure on your optic nerves." He chews at his bottom lip as Scott sighs, defeated. The elder brother rests his head heavily against the younger's still-present, supportive palm, seeming exhausted. _It has been quite the five or so hours._

"So… I'm not permanently blinded?" Scott finally voices his biggest fear; the one huge, horrifying terror that's been weighing on him for _hours_. "It will come back?"

"I'll check with Brains and we should do some scans but there's nothing wrong with your eyes, as such," Virgil tells him, trying to reassure. "It's just that pressure is, well, sort of choking the optic nerves that carry messages from your eyes to your brain." He can't help the worry that sneaks into his tone. This is really serious, but he doesn't want Scott to know that so he tries to reign it in. "Yeah, I'm pretty sure that it's just that proper blood circulation has been cut off by the swelling, and it's pressing on the optic nerves."

"That doesn't sound good." Scott scowls, a heavy weight against Virgil's side.

"It could be worse." The younger of them struggles to keep it light, but _it could be worse_ is probably the last thing Scott wants to hear right now. Virgil moves on quickly. "I think Brains and I can find a way to take down that swelling before the nerves are in any way permanently damaged. We should be able to restore your sight."

He really _hopes_ he can anyway. In reality Virgil's got only threads of an idea of how they can fix this. The idea of Scott, their Scott, being _permanently blinded_ is just too big and terrifying for Virgil to even begin to absorb. Scott would never fly a plane again, let alone One, and that… that would just _destroy_ him.

"Y-You'll just have to be a little patient with it." Virgil chokes out and Scott nods, resigned; the action pulling at Virgil's heartstrings. "Come on." Virgil forces himself to sound cheery as he gets an arm under Scott's shoulder and loops it across his back to help support him as he stands. He grabs the fallen washcloth as well - with the intention of warming it back up and reapplying it to his face, perhaps with some antibiotic ointment, when they're down there. "Let's head and see how Gordon's doing, and we can get you settled in med bay before we fly home, yeah?"

"Home," Scott whispers, almost reverently and so quietly that Virgil almost misses it. "Yeah that'd be… that'd be good..."

...

When they get down to Two's little med room, they find that John seems to have roped Alan into trying to keep Gordon awake, as there's the little green-clad hologram of their youngest brother, chattering away, hovering at Gordon's elbow. Poor John means well, but he isn't exactly the height of casual conversation. Gordon had protested that _Space Facts 101_ was putting him to _sleep_ rather than keeping him awake and so, evidently, reinforcements had been called in. Alan looks up at Virgil and Scott as they enter the frame.

"Hey guys!" Their baby brother chirps, and they both find a tired smile for his endless, bubbling enthusiasm. "I was just telling Gordon about the way I kicked Kayo's butt at Turbo Atom Smasher Three this afternoon!"

Gordon's head swings floppily in their direction, Alan having alerted him of their presence. His tired eyes widen as he takes in the thick bandage around Scott's head and the way Virgil is having to help him navigate the room.

"Oh? Is that a video game?" Scott is asking the kid's general direction, sounding a little bewildered though altogether unsurprised. Gordon has to bite his lip hard to stop himself commenting on the dried blood at Scott's collar and the pale, shaky way Virgil helps him sit down on the other gurney. It's impossible to miss the thick gloves restricting the use of his brother's hands or the steamy flannel that Virgil lies over the reddened marks on Scott's face when he gets him comfortably lying back.

"It's the only way he's ever going to beat Kayo up." Virgil is laughing. "It's got to be."

"It's only the best video game _ever!_ " Alan protests, unperturbed. "You get to fly a rocket in _space_ …" His enthusiasm doesn't seem to count for the fact he gets to do that _in real life_ almost weekly anyway. "... And yeah, Kayo can totally take me but don't forget she could kick _your_ sorry butts too, if she wanted and..."

"Guys… What's wrong with Scott's eyes?" Gordon interrupts suddenly, unable to hold his worry back any longer.

Virgil freezes, then takes a good, long look at their aquanaut. Gordon's wide-eyed- and pale. His breathing seems strained but, compared to how he'd found him, much of the colour has begun to return to his usually golden-tan skin. The frost-bitten patches of his face have come up a raw, painful looking red though.

"Mmm… Hey, thanks for keeping an eye on Gordon, Alan," Virgil gently tells the kid, instead of answering Gordon. He wants their littlest brother out of the way before he goes into any detail with his two patients. "Go finish up that homework and check in on Grandma for us, will you? She's probably worrying."

"FAB." Alan grins, throwing in a mock salute for good measure. He's far cheekier in his civvies than he ever would be in his IR uniform but, fortunately, he doesn't seem to have picked up on the fact he's being gotten rid of. "I'm on it, Virg."

"Thanks, kid." Alan's hologram blinks out and Virgil is left alone with his two injured brothers, though he suspects the one up in space is in no way as absent as he seems.

"We're working on the eye's thing.' He tells Gordon, to stop him trying to get up if nothing else. "Give us some space, ok Fishcake?"

Virgil checks Scott is settled and goes to rummage through their already pillaged blood transfusion kit so that he can work on hooking Scott up to his own pint of artificially synthesised blood. His veins are reassuringly easier to find than Gordon's had been, though it's still no easy feat.

"How cold are you feeling?" The younger brother worries, knowing that even though he was out of his damp suit sooner, Scott _had_ been stuck down there longer than Gordon. Even if the temperature hadn't been as low inside the bunker as it must have been after the avalanche, it wasn't exactly _warm_ to lie on a dirty floor, halfway up an Alpine mountain, bound to a chair.

"Shivery," Scott reports, sounding more than a little miserable about it. "Honestly, it's not great, Virg."

Virgil nods and donates one of the thick, warm blankets from the stock to wrap around his older brother. He finds one of the activatable heat packs, like Gordon's, and wraps it in a spare hoodie that he finds stuffed in the back of a cupboard that, by the look of the faded gaming logo, probably once belonged to Alan. He tucks it under the covers close to Scott's chest to help get his temperature up to something more stable. He's wary of providing him too much heat, of bringing his temperature up too fast, as that could cause them more problems in the long run.

"Mmm… Better." Scott gives him a tired, grateful smile, curling on his side into the new, blessed heat now radiating at his core. "That's a lot better."

"Glad to hear it." Virgil nods, adjusting Scott's pillow so that he's still propped up but definitely not putting any pressure on the upturned wounded side of his head. "Now, see here Gordon." He switches his position between their gurneys. "This is for your face." Virgil holds out a damp, warm cloth, waiting to drape it over the red, angry frostbite marks on his nose, cheeks and chin. "I've got some antibiotic ointment for you both as well, just to make sure those patches are clean."

"Ah, welcome to the wet flannel club, Gordo," Scott jokes from under his own, his voice tired and kind of muffled but it's light and jovial enough. "They come free with every case of frostbite." He seems to be making the best of a bad situation... _or_ he's putting on a show of bravado so that his little brothers don't worry. Personally, Gordon strongly suspects the latter but he snorts at him all the same, playing along as he lets Virgil cover the sore patches on his skin with soft, light-smelling salve and then the sweet, blessed heat of the damp washcloth. Unlike the pack before, his skin just _adores_ absorbing this new, soft warmth.

His surface temperature must be doing better.

"How're you feeling?" Their medic checks, but Gordon just shrugs lopsidedly at him which isn't particularly helpful. "Come on, you know how this works," Virgil prompts him. "Number out of ten."

"Maybe a five," Gordon reluctantly admits, sounding a little raspy. Virgil frowns. That's a lot lower than a seven, so the morphine must be doing it's job, but it's certainly not as low as Virgil would _like_ it to be. "I'm a bit warmer than I was." The aquanaut tries blearily to match Scott's false bravado. "Shivering's stopped again. M'really tired though..."

"Nope, no sleeping, not yet. Sorry Gordo." Virgil strips off his rubber glove and presses the back of his hand against his brother's icy cheek to try and gauge his temperature. As he does so he leans over and double checks Gordon's temperature readouts on the VSM as well, though experience has taught him to trust his own judgement more than a machine any day. He's a lot like their Grandpa Grant like that. Either way though, Gordon's temperature is still _far_ lower than Virgil would like.

Thinking quickly, Virgil comes up with a Plan B to try and defrost the popsicle that is his little brother. He could try more blankets or heat packs but they don't really seem to be doing enough for his core. Perhaps activating one of the respiratory masks with warm, humidified oxygen would be a good way of warming up his airways, which would then, in turn, help to raise his overall body temperature. Decision made, Virgil gently removes the wet cloth again, Gordon whining as he does so and Virgil cringes at the way the skin has begun to darken towards purples and blacks.

 _Gross_.

He fetches the O2 kit, hooking it up to a heater and a pump and he gently lifts Gordon's head so that he can slide the band of the mask around the back of it before he settles the plastic over his nose and mouth. Airway rewarming should definitely help get those red numbers on the VSM back up into the greens. Virgil's expecting to have to fight to get him to keep it on, but Gordon protests surprisingly little about it.

He must really be feeling out of it.

Virgil replaces the warm cloth on what he can of his brother's cheeks, tucking it a little under the edges of the mask in the hopes that the bioplastic won't rub against the frostbite wounds too much. The last thing Gordon needs is the thing that's supposed to be helping him wearing further holes in his cheeks.

"Right, good… How're you doing, Scott?" Virgil has let him be a little while and so feels the compulsion to check in with big brother before he makes his way back upstairs to fly them home. He retrieves the small tube of moisturising, antibiotic ointment from Gordon's side and gently lifts the washcloth on Scott's face to spread a thin layer over the worst of the angry purple-red marks. They are, at least, looking better than Gordon's. He'd do the same for his sibling's fingers but Virgil decides they're better off protected in the frostbite gloves for the moment; he doesn't want to needlessly cause the skin more trauma by removing and replacing them.

"Mmm... I'm alright," Scott affirms, in answer to Virgil's question. He's been starting to get smudgy, bright impressions when he looks directly at a light source, and that's making him feel a _whole_ lot better. His eyes are watering and stinging quite a bit though as he strains to _see_ , blinking up at the patchy darkness above him where the green ceiling of Two really _should_ be. Virgil must mistake this for a pained reaction though as he offers;

"Oh, hey, should I get you some meds?"

"No," Scott mumbles, but then his brain catches up, and he quickly corrects himself. "I mean, yes, but _no_ , not for my eyes." His head is pounding something fierce and his fingers are on _fire_ , but, "I think I'm starting to see again."

"Don't you strain your eyes," Virgil scolds, worried. He moves a single, broad palm over his brother's face to shade his vision, the hand big enough that it completely blocks the light. "You could be damaging them in the long run if you try to force it… I'm going to put a cover over them ok?" Scott starts to protest, but Virgil just presses a finger to a good part of his cheek, tapping lightly to cut him off. "No, listen." The Medic voice comes out. "Those eyes need to rest or you're just going to make the swelling worse."

Gently lifting his head, fingers tangling in the soft, scruffy hairs at the back of his brother's nape, Virgil works on winding a roll of bandage over Scott's eyes to block the light.

"Don't you mess with that," he commands, gently setting him back against the pillow. "Now, you got a number for that pain?"

"Five," Scott says, and Virgil just snorts at him because all he's done is match Gordon's answer, obviously not wanting to admit to anything worse in front of him.

"Riiiight." Little brother doesn't sound convinced. "Well, I'm going to give you some naproxen. It's an anti-inflammatory with pain-killing properties so we'll see how much that helps. It's a tablet, though. Think you feel up to taking it?"

Scott nods quietly and he begins a struggle to get himself more upright, his face cloth dropping away again as he does so.

"Geez Scott, here, let me help." Virgil gently chastises, sliding his hands under Scott's shoulders to guide him into a sitting position. Once he's got him propped up and vaguely steady looking, Virgil retrieves some warmed water and the promised medication, wrapping a big, reassuring arm around his back to support him as he takes it.

Scott's hands shake something awful, all fumbly and weak, as he attempts to lift the cup to his lips. A lot of water gets spilled as he tries to gulp in enough to get the drugs down, the eldest Tracy cringing as he feels water dribble down his chin.

"Ah, sorry, I didn't think…" There's a burst of pain as Virgil swipes something fabric, maybe the face cloth, across his raw chin before pressing it to the front of his now-damp hoodie. "It's alright, Scott," He says, mistaking his little noise of pain for one of apology. "Don't worry about it."

"Y-Yeah, sorry." He mumbles, accepting Virgil's help to lie unsteadily back down.

Virgil sighs roughly as he looks back over at Gordon and finds that their younger brother has strategically, _suspiciously_ , turned his face away from the pair of them.

"Ah, come on Gordon, eyes open," He prompts, suspecting his brother is trying to get away with napping. _Not on my watch_. "I see you over there falling asleep again."

"I'm gonna veg out in front of the holo TV screen for _houuuurs_ when this is over," Gordon complains, his groaning muffled under the oxygen mask.

"You have never, not once in your life, sat still long enough to be considered ' _vegging out'_ ," Scott snorts right back at him.

The gentle camaraderie between them is deeply reassuring and Virgil can't help the tired smile that finds its way onto his face.

He knows he should go now, up to the cockpit to get them _home_ , but, Virgil's fingers lingering on Scott's shoulder, he's struck by some internal pull that tells him he should be by their side. Virgil's not sure he can bring himself to leave them. _Not like this_.

"Virgil." That's John's Mission Director voice, succinct and emotionlessly commanding, almost to a fault. Virgil grits his teeth at him. "Head to the cockpit now, I've plotted your course back to Tracy Island." The astronaut is formal and to-the-point, with the obvious intent of spurring his brother into action. It works but not before Virgil experiences a jolt of _deep upset_ somewhere in his stomach over the fact he's being made to leave. It's his job and all but right now he can't help unfairly resenting it.

John though, ever aware, softens his tone as his green-clad brother pulls himself lingeringly away from their siblings and makes his way from the room.

"I'll watch these guys for you, so it's time to get them home, ok?" Their spaceman encourages, out of the patient's earshot. "You've done so well so far, they just need that little more from you? Think you can do it?"

Exhausted, Virgil takes just a second to lean against the wall outside and simply _breathe_.

"Are you ok to fly?" John checks, much gentler, deeply unsure that _he himself_ could remote pilot Two all the way back to the Island from up here, especially as she's carrying One below on grapple lines. They need Virgil for this - mostly because John's best _Plan B_ involves a rapid, dangerous emergency descent from the upper atmosphere, grabbing Alan and using Three to get a lift to the Alps. John isn't even sure if he'd be left in any kind of state to fly them home after that regardless.

Virgil though, eternally reliable, clenches his trembling hands into _fists_ and nods.

"Yeah," he says. "Just need a second."

"That's understandable." John's eyes are liquid blue-green pools of compassion, tinted even brighter by the blue haze of the holographic array. He goes quiet and dark after that though, giving his brother some privacy; but Virgil knows he'd be back at the slightest indication that he needs him. It's reassuring, if a little annoying, to know they've always got John up there looking out for them.

"Right." With a big breath Virgil pushes himself away from the wall, making strong, steady strides toward the cockpit. "Let's get these two back home."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this is an extra super long chapter to make up for the fact I've been ill the past couple of weeks (coronavirus sucks, can confirm) and haven't updated! Let us know your thoughts on how this chapter came out, would be good so we can get back on track. Love y'all! - Len (and Kelly) xx


	9. Chapter 9

The whole crew is there to meet them as they land, dropping the battered Thunderbird One (Scott is _not_ going to be pleased when he sees that paintwork) off on the runway and gliding past her into the hangar. The whole crew consists of Kayo, Alan, Brains and their grandmother, which really isn't much of a _crew_ at all. Virgil regrets, for a moment, that their staffing isn't bigger, more robust, more ready for _anything_ and yet, as he lowers the ramp and watches the four of them make their way up it toward him and his two bed bound brothers, he finds he far prefers International Rescue as a _family_ , not a crew anyway.

"They're gonna be fine." He's quick to reassure, downplaying the damage for their fretting grandmother and exchanging a meaningful glance with Brains behind her back to let him know that he's going to need his help. "Scott's eyes are being a bit funky and Gordon's a popsicle but it's nothing a few good hours in bed won't fix."

Gordon helps Virgil out by waving almost jovially at their grandmother from his bed, and that seems to help.

"Oh, well, that is a relief." Ruth Tracy takes her nearest grandson's big, warm hand and gives it a fond squeeze. "And you, Virgil, dear? Why, you look like you've _carried_ Two back here, rather than flown her!"

Virgil gives a dry chuckle and clasps her soft, old hands neatly between his own so that he can return the gentle pressure.

"I'm fine, Grandma," he promises, even though he feels so tired he can practically _hear_ colours. "I'm just going to get these two settled then head for a shower and a long nap. John said he'll be home soon," he adds, thinking of their only missing brother; who by now is hurtling 22,400 miles down through the atmosphere at near 17,500 mph. Which is never _not_ going to be a disconcerting thought. "Could you keep an eye on him for me when he lands?" Virgil requests. "You know what he's like when he's been up there a while and I suspect he's not followed as many safety guidelines as he should about his descent. Make sure he takes his salt tablets and has a proper rest before he goes worrying about these two."

"Of course, dear. Alan?" She picks on their littlest brother, currently bobbing anxiously about a pace from his two horizontal brothers. "Will you come up with me to the Space Elevator's landing pad to collect our Johnny?"

"Sure thing!" The youngest Tracy is practically vibrating with excitement upon hearing that his space-bound brother is on his way home. None of them get to see John _nearly_ enough and, while the situation that's warranted his visit is truly horrific, Virgil finds he can't blame Sprout for his infectious enthusiasm. Alan and John always were the closest of them anyway, before the distance between Earth and the upper atmosphere got in the way.

Grandma takes Alan's shoulder and steers him back down Two's ramp, leaving Kayo and Brains practically, patiently waiting for Virgil's instruction.

 _God bless you, Ruth Tracy._ Virgil closes his eyes and silently thanks her for removing Alan from the situation. The last thing he needs right now is their littlest brother seeing just how badly the guys are hurt and asking more questions than he knows how to answer.

"Right." Virgil pretends not to notice the world wavering as he turns a little too quickly back toward his injured siblings, swaying on his feet. "Let's get these two down to med bay so we can see what we're dealing with."

…

Gordon, thankfully, falls asleep somewhere between Two's hangar and the little medical room they keep stocked on the island in case of emergencies. Virgil can't even find it in himself to be mad at him for it.

It's not ideal, but if he's unconscious then at least he isn't in any _pain_.

Little brother's breathing is far more even and softer than it has been for the past hour or so and the pained pinch that Virgil was beginning to fear had taken up permanent residence between Gordon's brows ever since he'd found him under that avalanche seems to have smoothed itself out. The readouts from the scans are looking good for now, his internal temperature coming up nicely, but Virgil pays close attention to the beat of his brother's heart and the purple-unknown status of his vital organs. When a person's body temperature drops, their heart, nervous and respiratory systems and other organs could stop working normally. Virgil thinks he got to Gordon in good time, and he's treated him textbook style to get him warm again, hoping to prevent the failure of anything vital, but it doesn't mean that something couldn't go horribly wrong, even now.

Why does the human body have to be so damn _fragile_?

"R-right, let's have a look at this f-frostbite f-first." Brains, a balm for Virgil's anxiety, is at his elbow, quick and efficient as he peels the _now-not-so-warm_ cloth back from the blond boy's face so that he can inspect the cream-smeared pattern of blotchy red and purple frostbite that's scrawled unevenly across Gordon's cheeks. Brains pulls a face that's somewhere between sympathy and a wince. From up in space, John had filled in both him and Kayo (whose constant, quietly looming presence he's also finding surprisingly reassuring) with both of his siblings' conditions, while Virgil was flying home. From a distance, Virgil, wavering, watches Scott stoically sitting up in the bed he's been transferred to as Kayo carefully mimics Brains' ministrations on his face.

"These don't look _too_ bad," she tells him, smiling reassuringly even though the eldest Tracy brother can't see it. The raw, red marks are stark against his pale skin, but they should have no trouble healing up if left alone. If he's lucky they won't even scar. "Mind if I peel back that gauze to have a look at this head wound of yours, as well? John said it was quite the bump." Personally, Virgil thinks that's _wildly_ understating the messy expanse of raw, torn skin beneath his patch up job, but he doesn't comment. "We're going to do a scan to see if anything in there is cracked," she continues, gently unwinding the bandages. "Or if it's just the swelling that we need to deal with, alright?"

Scott makes a small, compliant noise and Virgil is pleased, distantly, to see him allowing her to work.

Scott must _really_ be feeling out of it… _or he's just really worried about his eyes…_

Virgil has to admit he is, too.

"V-Virgil?" Brains draws said Tracy's attention back to him. Two's pilot blinks, languidly, then suddenly finds their resident genius is in his personal space, looking up at him with concern, having moved from where he was laying gauze against Gordon's cheeks. "Are you a-alright?"

There's a rolling shrug of Virgil's shoulders and an accompanying wince as tired muscles and tendons pull. He's had to dig deep into reserves that he didn't know he _had_ just so many times today that even _he's_ shocked he's still on his feet.

Kayo glances up at them, having heard Brains' questioning. She takes in just how exhausted Virgil looks and the way Brains is hovering between him and Gordon - still flat on his back and unconscious to the world. She glances back at Scott: whatever's about to go down between the two other men, he doesn't need to be listening in. Kayo bites her lip and stands to pull the heavy curtain across. She presses some buttons on a panel and a light rendition of an old recording of Virgil playing piano fills the air on that side of the room. She's evidently hoping it'll prevent Scott from hearing whatever happens next.

"I'm just tired." Virgil, realising Brains is still hovering, excuses his absent behaviour, blinking away the fuzzy balls of light that have begun to gather in his line of sight and steadfastly ignoring the ache of his back and shoulders where he'd thrown himself against that door earlier.

"Mmm…" Brains agrees, non-committally, though, with little time to be hanging around, he makes himself busy hooking Gordon up to a fresh bag of blood and a tasty cocktail of sedatives using the peripheral venous catheter that Virgil had already placed in his arm while aboard Thunderbird Two.

He does find a moment, though, to silently pass Virgil a big, green thermal mug of coffee that he'd produced from _who knows_ where. Virgil doesn't really care _when_ the man found the time to magic that up (it was probably before they'd even arrived because Brains is just so _good_ like that) but Virgil is ready to get down on his knees and praise him for it (and he probably would, if he actually thought he'd be able to get up again). The coffee is hot, extra strong, black, and five sticky sugars thick. He could probably stand a spoon up in it, if only he had the inclination to give it a go.

"Thanks," Virgil murmurs before he downs the steaming brown liquid in almost one go. It burns all the way down, and he physically _feels_ his heart rate pick up as his body reacts to the stimuli. _Perfect. Time for work._ The twitch in his hands just signifies that the caffeine is doing its job, _right?_ "How's that hole in Gordy's leg looking?" he asks, dreading the answer.

"N-not ideal," comes the reply, as Brains discards the bloodied bandaging that he's been unwinding, tossing it in the bio-waste trash can, so he can poke carefully around the raised, angry hole in their aquanaut's skin. "I-it's very swollen and I s-suspect the connective soft tissues around the b-bullet have already begun to s-scab over. If left a-alone they will knit back t-together around the sh-shot."

"Right." Virgil swallows down the awful mix of strong-coffee-and-stomach-acid that's rising in his throat and snaps on a pair of latex-free gloves. Lifting the light weight of a scalpel blade from the metal tray Brains has prepared, and poising it between his fingers, Virgil becomes laser focused. "Let's get that bullet out."

...

A horrific amount of digging, the chink of a bullet into a metal bowl and a thick roll of bandages later, Gordon's leg has eight stitches holding the deep hole in it closed and Virgil has tunnel vision: everything dark and hazy at its edges.

The real-time X-ray rig that had guided Virgil's steady hand to the bullet had also confirmed it didn't hit bone and so the little round cylindrical wound should heal up nicely. It's a big relief and a huge weight off Virgil's achy shoulders. His frostbite seen to, he can now let Gordon do the rest, trusting in the strength of his brother's healing capabilities. If only they didn't have to keep putting them through their paces so often though.

_Right, time to turn his attention back to their oldest brother._

"How you doing, Scott?" he calls across the space and is rewarded by a long, disheartening _groan_. "About that good, huh?"

Virgil makes his way to the other side of the room, leaving Brains doing some final checks over Gordon. He peels the bloodied gloves from his fingers with some sense of satisfaction, dropping them in the bio waste bin and snapping on fresh ones, powdery and dry, straight from the box. His vision swims as he tries to focus on his hands, but he pointedly ignores it.

Behind the curtain, he finds Scott no longer sitting up, but laid flat on his back, the sharp rise and fall of his chest the only visible indication of his awareness. As he reaches her side, Kayo silently hands over the holo-tablet of CT scans that show the fracture at the front of Scott's skull and the raw, red areas of swelling behind his brother's eyes that show up as puffy, inconsistent areas on the holo-data. Virgil's blue-clad fingers slide through the data with a scowl, forcing himself to take it all in.

He's almost glad Scott can't see this.

"How _are_ you conscious?" Virgil demands.

"You _did_ tell me to stay awake," Scott complains, his voice not much more than a scratchy whisper, as if even talking hurts his head. "Please can you turn that off, though." He hates to be in any way critical of Virgil's beautiful playing but if _Moonlight Sonata_ loops once more Scott thinks his skull might crack in half. "Remember when Gordon got that obsession with the drums one summer when he was, like, fourteen?" Scott's nose wrinkles, crumpling cream-slathered scabs. " _Ouch_ , it's like _that_."

"Ouch," Virgil agrees, his voice much, much quieter this time. He's far more considerate as he shuffles into big brother's personal space, flicking off the recording of himself as Kayo tries not to look _too_ guilty about it beside him. It was a good idea, to keep what was happening to Gordon from him, and he'd have only complained _worse_ about earplugs.

Virgil smiles at his all-but-sister, and reaches out to give her arm a reassuring squeeze. She did the right thing. Scott's got a clean, fresh dressing over the wound at his temple and a thick pillow either side of his head to keep it stable. Checking the holochart again, Virgil thinks it best to give him some more anti-inflammatories and try and get some of that swelling down. They'll have to keep a close eye on it for the next few hours.

"Thanks for taking care of him." He nudges Kayo, before turning to Scott. "How're your hands?" he asks, keeping his voice not much louder than a whisper but Scott just shrugs limply in response. "Have you had anything for the pain?" Scott shakes his head.

He's quiet as Virgil double checks and administers a cocktail of the right anti-inflammatory and painkilling drugs. Disposing of the hypodermic and setting the syringe aside, he gently takes Scott's right hand by the wrist, lifting it close to him. Big brother sets his jaw and bears it with not much more than little, pained huffs of breath from between his teeth as Virgil carefully manoeuvres the thick water-pumping gloves off his stiff fingers. Brains' design has done wonders at trapping moisture in there and Scott's hands look raw, pink and shiny, but at least they're not cracked or bleeding.

"Looking good, the other?"

Scott silently offers up his other hand, which looks much the same once Virgil has extracted his digits from their warm prison. _Brains_ , Virgil thinks, _I could kiss you, you mad genius you_. Those gloves have probably saved his brother's fingers.

Now Virgil just needs to deal with the eyesight problem.

Before then though, he ever so tenderly bandages Scott's fingers in an attempt to keep the carefully preserved moisture in, his brother subdued and miserable throughout. It'd be bad if they cracked or the sore skin dried out now. Scott's going to have a rough time with the limited mobility in them for a while as it is. By the time he's finished neatly tucking the ends of the bandages under, so that they don't fray, Virgil's tunnel vision has narrowed to a wobbly maquette of his own fingers working.

"Brains?" A low buzzing has started in the younger man's ears, his mouth is tingling. "Hey… can I borrow you for a sec?" Virgil tries to play it off as casual, hoping that Scott's _smother_ senses won't detect something's up.

"Y-yes, V-Virgil?" A ruffle of brown hair and blue glasses appears from around the curtain, Brains' expression concerned but alert and ready to help. "G-Gordon is s-stable and resting well."

"Glad to hear it." The relief sparks like popping candy on Virgil's heavy tongue. He sits down heavily; more by luck than judgement landing in the hard plastic chair by Scott's side. "Could you connect Scott's line up to some fluid's for me?" He asks, drawing a deep breath in, in the hopes it will stop everything swaying. It's probably best he lets Brains do any of the more fiddly work now, with just how badly his vision is blurring. Virg reckons he'll be fine in an hour or so, after he either crashes or he's had another strong cup of coffee, but until then it's best he _not_ play around with catheter needles.

While Brains is doing that Virgil reaches out a vague, wavering hand and places a big, warm palm to the uninjured part of his brother's forehead, gauging temperature. Scott makes a small, weak noise and pushes his face against the heat of Virgil's hand in a way that pulls at something in Virgil's chest, like he's a kitten or a puppy or something equally sappy and _unlike Scott_. His headache is still pounding a full scale brass band beneath his blacked-out eyelids, but Scott seems to have given up protesting, exhaustion wiping the fight from him.

Ever so gently, Virgil swipes his thumb in repetitive motions over his brother's forehead, soothing and smoothing out the pained wrinkles between his older sibling's eyebrows. Scott's skin still feels cool and clammy to the touch, but he's no longer the ball of ice he'd been when they brought him in. He'd affirm this with the little yellow readouts on the monitor but Virgil doesn't think his eyes can focus long enough to see numbers any more, even if he strains them.

Quietly conferring with Brains, they decide to give him a top up of pain meds and a sedative to make him sleep, though they agree to keep a close eye on him and are extra careful with the dosage. The last thing Virgil wants is for his big brother to slip into a coma, medically induced or otherwise.

"We should move G-Gordon upstairs now," Brains suggests, interrupting Virgil's fretting, "so that S-Scott can have some p-peace and q-quiet while the swelling goes down."

"Gordy'll be more comfortable in his own room," Virgil agrees. They can transport his monitors and everything up there and Gordon's own duvet will be miles more restful than the med-bay blankets. Plus it's a nightmare trying to get any Tracy to stay down here for any length of time; moving him sooner rather than later will make life easier for all of them. He'd do the same for Scott, only Virgil suspects his lack of eyesight makes him unsafe to be anywhere he'd be tempted to move around, and anyway, his eyes are going to need more scans - the machinery for which is down here.

"I'll t-take G-Gordon up," Brains offers, strongly suspecting that Virgil isn't up to transporting anyone but _himself_ to a bed right around now. "There are still r-ramps to his room from when he was i-in that w-wheelchair." It's not often anyone brings up the aftermath of the hydrofoil accident, the time painful for any of them to remember, but Virgil can't help but think that right now the systems they have in place because of it seem like a relief.

For Scott, dosing, everything has started to settle into a low, background buzz. It'd almost be pleasant if not for the dull, lingering ache that's creeping its tendrils out through his skull and throbbing behind his eyes. He's vaguely aware of the long, muffled process of them moving Gordon and all of his equipment out of the room, but none of it's really in focus.

"You and Alan can't run operations alone," Virgil is saying, somewhere distant. "Someone needs to put in a call to Colonel Casey to say we're out of action for a while." He hears Kayo agree softly, followed by the sound of someone approaching him, then messing with something on his bedside table for a few minutes.

He must make some kind of sound, or move in some way in response, because Virgil picks up on it.

"Hey, get some sleep, Scotty," Virgil gently advises, and a loose strand of brown hair that's _deeply_ in need of a wash is brushed from his forehead, "We'll put the lights out here and leave you in peace but here..." He carefully takes one of his brother's sore, bandaged hands and leads it over to where the holocomm sits on his bedside table. "Feel that? I'm no John but I've done my best to set this up so that you just have to put your hand over it, and it'll call me, ok? If I don't come running, Brains will get the alert as well..." He breaks off the end of his sentence with a loud, wide yawn that makes Scott wince as the sound reverberates through his sore skull. "Ah, sorry... I'm… just going to have a shower and lie down for a bit." Scott's hand is gently returned to his side, his injured fingers curling weakly against Virgil's palm just before he lets go in a small, tender moment of brotherly reassurance. "Kayo?" Scott is left adrift and alone as his brother goes off to talk to their surrogate sister. "Think you could go check if Alan and Grandma have seen John yet?"

"Sure thing." She sweeps her ponytail over her shoulder and folds her arms. "I… I'm worried about him, you know?"

"We all are." Virgil sighs. "John's an idiot for pushing himself but I can't blame him for wanting to be here."

"J'ns too smart to be an idiot." Scott mumbles, from deep in his nest of pillows, missing most of the point. "S'a genioous. S'idiot… call him an idiot."

"You're an idiot for still being awake," Kayo comments, torn between amusement at the absolute lack of sense the elder Tracy is making and cooing at the sweetness of him sticking up for his red-headed little brother.

"Good _night_ , Scott," Virgil says, pointedly, as he flicks off the lights ready to leave his brother in peace. If he's honest, it's tempting to go climb into his shower and just stay there for at least three days. Brains, currently up with Gordon, has the holo-monitor linked up to both the brothers' medical readouts, so the engineer can keep an eye on the swelling and see when they might wake up. Virgil knows Scott's in safe hands.

With one last glance at the shape of Scott, outlined faintly in the soft light from the doorway, Virgil finally leaves the room. He strides down the hall, his footsteps echoing, not stopping. He keeps going until he reaches his own bedroom, until he makes his way into the little bathroom connected to it, until he's stripped off his cold, sweaty uniform and dumped it, a crumpled heap of dirty fabric, carelessly in a pile on the bathroom tiles.

He keeps moving until the world is tilting alarmingly and Virgil finds himself lying on the floor of his high-pressured shower with the water thundering down on him from the shower head like a tropical rainstorm; as hot as his skin can take and even then a few degrees higher. Quickly he finds his skin is red and burning.

Virgil had been starting to worry he'd never feel properly warm again, his skin's been permanently goose-pimpled and chilly since the avalanche, but the heavy, oppressive beat down of the hot water washes all that away.

He's ridiculously stiff and achy though. There's a low, troublesome burn right through every single one of his worn, stretched muscles. He's not sure that trying to _force_ some of the warmth he's lost back in through his very pores like this is exactly _wise, but_ he's just too damn tired to care.

If this is a chance to wash away the grime and terror of the past nine hours, then Virgil is going to take it.

He sits there far longer than he knows he should, too exhausted to move: letting the blasting heat from the shower heat the tiles beneath him to searing temperatures and fill the room with thick steam that swirls pleasantly, numbingly in his lungs. There's no John up on Thunderbird Five right now to decide it's bad for him and snappishly turn the water off so instead Virgil sits there right up until he thinks he's going to pass out, dark splotches creeping in at the corners of his vision, before he finally realises that he needs to force himself to move to a _real_ bed or poor Alan or Kayo or, god forbid, _Grandma_ is going to find him drowned in the shower. He sways jerkily, dangerously, as he climbs out, slapping a big palm down on the towel rail to stop himself from toppling over again as all the blood rushes from his head toward his heart with the motion.

He crashes into bed, big, fluffy green towel and all, without even drying his hair.

Virgil's thoughts slide away, sensation swimming pleasantly into the distance. The world is all disjointed and colourful against the darkness of the underside of his lids, like a hazy, soft-focused filter has been placed over the lenses of his eyes.

Virgil passes out.

Maybe in twelve hours or so he might even feel _human_ again.


	10. Chapter 10

There's a small shuffle of footsteps that Scott doesn't recognise, somewhere far off, maybe near the doorway. His heart does a jolting _badump_ of fear, shooting right up into his throat. Unfamiliarity fuelled panic picks up on the machinery he's hooked up to, and Scott can literally _hear_ his own blood pressure rise. The feet come closer and it's definitely not Virgil's heavy gait, or Alan's light steps. He can't place it as Grandma's shuffling or Brains' nervous pitter patter or even Kayo's almost undetectable smooth step (especially as she's taken to announcing her presence every time to prevent him from jumping). Scott's thoughts go instantly to: _there's an intruder on the Island,_ but really, as he thinks about it (and as he hears the intruder knock their elbow unsteadily against something and gasp) there's really only one person it could be.

"...John?"

"Hey, Scott." Definitely-John sounds tired and that lights a spark of worry in big brother's chest that definitely doesn't help lower his pulse. Their ginger brother takes the drop from space fairly well, considering the damage plummeting 22,400 miles in a capsule the size of a public bathroom stall _could_ do him, but the wobbliness and gravity to his tone makes it sound like this one's been one of those rough descents.

_Is he alright_? Scott frets. _It sounds like he could fall over at any moment._ He'd thought Grandma and Alan were going to meet him at the Space Elevator. _Has John given them the slip, or did they let him down here?_

Scott listens as that strange, uneven weight distribution make its way across the floor, but John doesn't comment any further to give him any better idea of where he is.

It kind of hurts that John's been up in space for long enough that Scott seems to have forgotten what his brother's footsteps sound like. Even his voice is just that little bit different in person. Having him here has taken out some of that metallic, impersonal-ness that his voice gets flattened to over the radio.

"Hey, where _are_ you?" Scott frowns, starting to get frustrated. Any of his other siblings would be _right_ up in his personal space by now, but John lingers somewhere distant and uncertain on the fringes. Scott raises both bandaged hands toward the wayward spaceman, but no one takes them. "...John, get over here," He orders, tense. "If you're actually _on_ the planet for once, I'd like to be able to tell." He tries to make it a joke but it's just _not funny_ and his tone falls flat. There's a banger of a headache working up a tempo behind Scott's eyes and it's doing nothing for his mood.

"Sorry." There's a movement of air somewhere to his left and his blindly wandering fingers bump suddenly and painfully into a solid chest.

"Ah!"

"Sorry," John apologises once more, rapidly backing off into _nothingness_ again. He sounds more and more miserable with each iteration. There's an awkward beat of silence between them, a beat of not knowing quite where his brother is to the point that his voice might as well just be from a hologram. If he's really here in the flesh and blood then Scott wants to make the most of it, _damn it._

"John!" Patience gone, Scott scowls at the vague direction of the family astronaut, feeling snappish. "If you don't get over here and let me know where you are, then, so help me, I'm going to sic Virgil on that _space wobbliness_ of yours."

"How did _you_ know?" John complains, and there's a pressure on the side of the mattress, a dip somewhere about his knee, as John, _finally_ , gingerly, sits down within his reach. "How're the eyes?" he queries.

"How's the _gravity_?" Scott counters, almost _hearing_ John's frown in response before he relents with a sigh. John has come all the way down here, _literally_ , to see him after all; when he probably should have gone straight to bed. "Brains says they should be just fine once the swelling that's pressing on the nerves goes down." Scott jumps a little as _ever so light_ fingers appear out of nowhere and John softly traces the textured curve of bandage that runs over his eyes and up over the bridge of his nose. "I've had some anti-inflammatories and _whatever else_ it was that Brains and Virgil cooked up," he tries to reassure him. "The bandaging is just a stupid precaution so that they're forced to rest while they heal."

"Hmm," Says the spaceman, ever eloquent. "I'd say you were pretty lucky. Even ten years ago, such an injury could have permanently blinded you."

"I'm _aware_ ," Scott notes, tense. John's hands drop away and another awkward silence plays out between them. It's so rare that it's just the two of them together, without the riot of the younger three and with John actually present in _person_. In fact, as Scott chews at his bottom lip, he's not sure he can _remember_ the last time it was just them. "How's Gordon?"

"Gordon's gonna be fine, I've been keeping an eye on his biodata and it's all an upwards path. He's sleeping it off and Brains isn't worried about any complications. Virgil's up in bed as well. Can… Can I get you anything?" John offers, out of kindness or as a method of escape, Scott is worryingly unsure. He hears a rustle of fabric as John moves, _an arm? Or something?_ It's frustratingly hard to tell.

"Slice of Mom's apple pie and more of Brains' best painkillers would be nice." Big brother requests and John snorts at him, evidently amused. _It's nice to hear him laugh_ , Scott thinks. _John doesn't laugh nearly enough_.

"I'll see what I can do about the pie once I've had a good eight hours of sleep and can be trusted in the kitchen," He promises, blooming a flower of hopefulness in Scott's chest. Nobody makes their Mom's apple pie recipe like John does. "And I'll ask Virgil about your meds," He adds, "I've no idea what he's got you on."

"Something not strong enough," Scott complains, hating the fact he has to admit it. John hesitates for a moment, surprised that Scott has even told him this. It leaves the younger of them lacing his long fingers together in complex knots, unsure how to respond.

"Get well soon, yeah?" John eventually requests in return, and there's another shift of weight as he leaves the mattress, his... fidgety? John's never _fidgety,_ presence disappearing off of Scott's radar faster than the time it'd take him to say _apple pie_. "You had me scared today," John is saying, somewhere soft and upsettingly distant. "Do me a favour and do anything Virgil asks of you for a couple of days, ok?"

Tentatively, gently, a warm, long-fingered hand comes to rest on his shoulder, giving it a little squeeze. He was closer than he sounded. Scott's eyes start watering dangerously under the bandage, and he's _very_ glad John won't be able to tell.

"Will do," he promises, his voice a little choked. Scott's not keen on being hovered over by Virgil, but he'd also like to minimise his brother's worries as much as possible. "Thanks, John."

...

When Virgil finally wakes he's unsure if he feels well rested or not. A glance at the blue glow of his digital clock tells him that he's slept for almost _eleven_ hours but there's still a deep, lingering ache in his muscles that hasn't gone away with the prolonged rest. It sears a hot line through both his arms, his shoulder _twinging_ , as he stretches them over his head, and it races down his calves from the tendons behind his knees as he swings his legs to the side, intending on getting out of bed. _Ugh_. The pain suggests its more than simple exhaustion that's wrong with him. Tentatively, he pushes himself to his feet, his muscles screaming at him as he does so. Virgil frowns. The blame for all this, yet again, rests squarely with _the Hood_. How could anyone _human_ be so callus as to set explosives off in a _mountain range_ in order to make their escape, not caring who they trapped under the avalanche they directly caused. Virgil's fingers ball into fists. He has to admit the plot worked, they were _plenty_ distracted enough by the plummeting ice and snow and the almost _murder_ of their brother so as not to worry about that vile man's escape.

Virgil doesn't have the energy to stay angry though, he's got bigger things to worry about right now.

Heading slowly over to his wardrobe, Virgil grabs the first checked shirt and jeans he finds and throws them on, remaining bare foot for now as socks are hardly the first thing on his mind. He scrubs his face briefly with cold water and brushes his teeth, simplifying his morning routine down to the basics before he finds himself stumbling out into the bright hallway, blinking like a startled deer at the bright lights. He has to go check on his brothers.

"Virgil!"

Virgil is leaning heavily against the door to push it closed behind him when he hears his youngest sibling calling out. He looks up, surprised, to find the kid is sprinting down the corridor toward him. It's not a harried, _something's gone wrong, the guys are in danger, we have a situation_ kind of sprint though, so Virgil tries to press down the spark of worry that's flared in him at the sight of Alan careening in his direction.

"Oh, hey, Al," he says, his voice coming out forcibly casual though far more tired sounding than he'd like. "Everything ok?" He checks, though Virgil can't help but be pleased to see him either way. Alan's always in such good spirits, bouncing along even though two of his brothers are practically hospitalised and the other two have been asleep for hours... Speaking of which, Virgil thinks he should probably look in on John too. Check the Space Case actually _is_ sleeping. _He'd better be,_ Virgil thinks grimly, _woe betide him if he's not._

Realising his thoughts have wandered off and that he's _still_ leaning against his door, Virgil sweeps a hand backwards through his dark mussed hair and turns to face his younger brother whose grinning glowingly up at him and bouncing on the balls of his feet, evidently pleased to see his big brother awake. Virgil, his own spirits lifted by the sight, really hopes Alan doesn't _ever_ grow out of that.

"Are you alright?" The kid cocks his blond head to one side, regarding his big brother with _suspicion_. "You slept for _aaaages_!"

Virgil can't help but smile softly at him, the expression amused but full of warmth and fondness.

"Yeah," he says, a bit sheepish. "I guess yesterday just really took it out of me, you know? I'm glad you've been around for everyone." One hand comes up to rub absent-mindedly at the thick muscle of his sore shoulder, wondering how well Brains and Kayo and their Grandmother have been coping.

"Still feeling stiff, huh?" Alan asks, impressively observant. "Is your arm ok?" A little bit of worry that Virgil doesn't _like_ seeps into the kid's voice. Big blue Bambi eyes look him up and down, taking in just how lopsided his brother is holding himself; his posture's all wonky and there are little crinkles of pain lining the corners of his eyes.

Alan takes a breath and tries his best to keep it together a little longer. _It's ok. They're going to be fine. It's ok._ Virgil needs him.

"Mmm." Virgil nods, unaware of his brother's inner turmoil. "Hey, who'd have guessed that shoulders _don't_ make good battering rams?" He grins, all teeth and nonchalance, and he shakes his head, dismissing his brother's worry. He reaches out to rest a reassuring hand on Alan's shoulder. It dwarfs the kid. "How're you doing, though?" Virgil adds. "It can't be easy for you right now."

Alan just shrugs, it's not a great sign.

"I'm fine. I'm not the one who's hurt, but I… I guess we all know the risks when we go out, right?" Alan sounds a bit like he's parroting something Scott would say, but the hopeful look he shoots Virgil, all big blue eyes and trepidation, is full of the impression that he also believes it.

"True." Virgil watches his brother's face closely for signs of upset, considering his point. "But that doesn't make it any easier when we come back... like, uh, _this_." He waves a vague hand around, the gesture trying to encapsulate the horror of finding out that one brother is blind and that the other had been _shot_. "Right?"

Alan nods, agreeably and Virgil feels pretty darn proud of the mature way he seems to be dealing with everything that's happened. It's easy to tell that the whole situation has upset him, but he's doing his best, as the last standing Tracy brother, to hold it all together with a big smile. _Atta boy, Allie_.

"Do _you_ need anything?" Virgil questions suddenly, aware that he's started using his supportive hand on Alan's shoulder to support _himself_ more than anything. He's leaning maybe a _little_ too much weight down through his palm as his cramping leg muscles complain at him, though Alan, _bless him_ , doesn't protest.

"I just... I want to…." Alan's nose scrunches, crinkling the smattering of tiny freckles across it. "Can… can I go see them?"

Virgil smiles, squeezing Alan's shoulder gently before he takes back his hand. Alan stands straighter without the weight and Virgil tries not to feel guilty about that.

"I think that can be arranged," he says, aiming to keep his tone light. "I was on my way down there anyway. You can join me if you want, I'm checking in on Gordon first though."

"You're gonna take it easy too, right?" Alan asks, as they begin to make their way towards Gordon's room. "I dunno what happened out there, not _really_ , but I… I've never known you to be all tired like _that_ before." Alan ducks under one of Virgil's big arms, pulling it up over his head so that he can drape the limb across his own much smaller shoulders as if that will, in some way, be a great help.

Emotionally, it _really_ is. Practically, not so much. Their youngest brother is still a bit short to make a good crutch, but Virgil has to admit he _is_ well on his way to becoming a beanpole like Scott and John. He sure _eats_ enough to be due a growth spurt sometime soon and Gordon's gonna be _so_ mad when Alan inevitably overtakes him.

"I will, Alan, don't you worry." Virgil smiles as the soft, duckling-down fluff at the back of his brother's nape tickles against his wide forearm. He presses the kid close to his side in a pantomime of needing his support when really, Virgil just wants a bit of an excuse for a hug. "The priority is Gordon and Scott, ok? All I got were a few bruises and kind of chilled."

"Still... Don't push it," Alan requests, quiet and doubtful from under his arm though with the wisdom of a man twice his age. "I can help with anything you need you know, I'm very good at fetching stuff and things."

"I know, Alan, I know." Virgil pulls him briefly closer to his side again as they walk, giving his brother another good, solid squish of thanks. "Come on then, let's go see what Gordon's got himself into since I last saw him..."


	11. Chapter 11

It takes the funny, wobbly pair way longer than Virgil would've liked to get to the aquanaut's room, but when they reach the door, it's Alan who takes the lead, bringing his hand up to knock first, just in case Gordon's awake.

He bites his bottom lip and looks over at Virgil, his eyes all big and liquid with worry when there's no reply from within.

"Well... I'd be surprised if he _were_ awake," Virgil admits, following Alan as he shoves open the door and bounds into his brother's space. "Yesterday was a, uh, pretty rough day." That really seems like an understatement.

Inside the room, they're met with an array of monitors, all bleeping softly, rhythmically and, to Virgil, reassuringly. Gordon is all tucked up peacefully in his bed and it'd almost be a _cute_ sight if not for the way he's surrounded by machinery; hooked up to all sorts of wires and tubes and drips. Kayo, sat quietly reading a book in the chair beside the blond's bed, looks up at them as they sneak in and silently smiles a greeting. She looks a bit bored if anything. Evidently she's got herself designated as this morning's babysitter and is _loving_ the challenge. _Not_.

She'd do anything for these boys, but usually that 'anything' involves some kind of _action_. Sitting _still_ is not her best trait.

"Glad to see you up," she murmurs as Virgil passes, and he shoots her a quick, grateful look, too impatient to busy himself with the medical equipment set up around Gordon to really focus on her. She doesn't seem to mind though. Alan joins them, sitting cross-legged up on the bed beside his immediately-older brother's feet while the family medic investigates the numbers on the displays and the contents of the little holo pad that's been recording Gordon's stats.

"Soooo... How's he doing?" Alan, unable to stand the suspense any longer, whispers loudly, peering over at what Virgil's up to as big brother fiddles with some wires. There's hesitation to his question as if he's afraid of what the answer might be, but he did just _have_ to ask.

Virgil spares a moment to look over and offer up a comforting smile.

"He's alright, Alan," he says, keeping his voice low. "It takes a lot more than this to keep our Gordon down for long, you know." It's clear he's thinking of the months of recovery following his brother's hydrofoil accident; compared to that, being shot and frozen half to death _is_ minimal. "He's just gonna be off his feet for a bit while that hole in his leg heals."

"Ha! He'll _love_ that," Alan snorts, full of amusement and sarcasm as he looks over the still, silent aquanaut. It's so deeply unnatural to see Gordon, usually so bouncy and full of life, acting so quiet and inert. Even in sleep, he's usually all squirmy and wiggly, and he's a _menace_ for rolling right out of bed. It was the _worst_ thing about having to share a room with him when they were little, and god forbid he ever fall asleep on the sofa next to you because you're pretty likely to get an accidental (though Alan wasn't sure that last time _had_ been all that accidental) foot to the face.

"His blood pressure is back up, the transfusion was successful and his temperature is looking good. Pulse and breathing are strong." Virgil wastes a second smoothing out the corner of the thick, warm coverlet that's spread over his little brother, his fingers lingering sentimentally on the raised texture of the stitches where their Mother had spelt out _Gordon Cooper Tracy_ longer ago than Virgil can even remember. "The frostbite marks on his face are looking a lot better than I thought they would," he adds. "I won't know more about his leg until I can have another look at it, but I don't want to disturb…"

As if by magic, or, more likely, as if roused by the sound of his brother's voice, Gordon chooses that exact moment to stir.

He's dragged toward consciousness with a small groan that seems to startle his older brother, stealing away the end of Virgil's sentence. Gordon finds himself blinking blearily up at his own wooden ceiling with a look of honest confusion as to how he got there. It takes a moment or two for everything that has happened to sink back in.

"Heya, bro." Alan dangles himself over Gordon's line of vision, beaming disconcertingly at him. "About time you woke up, lazy goldfish _suck_."

"Ugh, d'you guys hav' t'be so loud?" Gordon murmurs his complaint, turning his face with a visible wince, the raw, scabbed skin pulling as he tries to look fuzzily around at his own miniature crowd. The dark, purplish-red areas of his frostbitten face look awful in the dim light of the lamp at his bedside table. It's perhaps all the worse to see him look so hurt in a place that's supposed to be _safe_.

"Sorry, Gordon," Virgil says, not looking very apologetic at all. If anything, he looks _relieved._ Finally, satisfied that all seems to be in order with the machinery, he makes his way back over to Alan's side, kneeling down to fit himself between Kayo and their perched younger brother. "How're you feeling, Champ?"

"Nngh... Like someone shot me jus' before I was buried 'n an avalanche," Gordon replies, squinting blearily up at his sibling like he's an _idiot_. It's kind of a relief to know he's cognisant of exactly what had happened to him - it bodes much better than Scott's absent confusion did.

"Well, I guess you're not _wrong_." Virgil can't help the light chuckle that escapes him; he'd probably throw back his head and laugh 'til he cried if he felt he had the time for it.

"If you mean right now, though," Gordon adds, his head lolled to the side and his eyes closed again like focusing on the world is just _too much_. "M'leg _is_ aching. Kind'f a lot, actually."

Virgil frowns slightly. It's not like Gordon to admit things like that, given his past history. Especially with Alan in the room. All of them are perhaps a little _too_ cautious about worrying their littlest brother - John being, by far, the worst culprit. A small pool of his own concern gathers at the back of Virgil's mind; there's always the possibility that in his exhaustion he could have caused some kind of extra damage, perhaps to the fine, tricky nerves of his brother's leg, while removing the bullet. The idea looms over him like an omen.

"Got a pain scale for me?" Virgil tentatively checks, reaching out to rest a big, warm hand on his brother's better knee. Alan swallows audibly beside him as if _really_ dreading a high answer. Kayo folds her arms beside them.

"Maybe a four? S'not, like, proper pain," Gordon decides, the number deceptively low. Alan lets go of all of the air he was holding at once with a loud _whoosh_. "S'just a real bad ache."

"Nothing sharp or piercing feeling?" Virgil doesn't trust Gordon's perception of pain for a second, privately upping that number to a six or seven in his head. He shuffles around, folding blankets back to strategically expose just his brother's bandaged leg, paying the scowl he gets from his brother for letting the cold seep in no mind. Virgil checks the neat bandaging for blood spots and, finding relievingly none, pinches Gordon's big toe to check his circulation. The bright white skin doesn't deepen back to pink immediately but it doesn't take an unreasonable amount of time either.

"Nah." Gordon's head tilts, toes wiggling to try and shake him off without hurting his leg more. "Jus' kinda throbs."

A sigh escapes Virgil's lips, almost in relief. Doesn't sound like nerve damage. Aching is to be more than expected after all he's been through.

"Does your face feel ok?" Big brother checks, gently reaching out to gloss his fingers down the side of his brother's jaw, skirting around his damaged cheeks. He angles it so that the weak lamplight falls a little better across the raw, patchy flesh. "Do you want any more painkillers?"

Gordon shakes his head, the motion sluggish and tired. Virgil knows he's on the good drugs and that sleep is the best thing for him now but that doesn't mean he _likes_ seeing his brother all loose and disconnected like this. He wants to be able to help more and it's honestly frustrating there's nothing else he can do. His fingers itch to be _doing_ something. He'll probably go hash out something fast-paced and excessively complicated on the piano as soon as he gets the chance.

"C'n manage f'r now," Gordon says, not even attempting to stifle the wide, ugly yawn that overtakes him. "Mmm… Ev'rything's… he'vy…"

Alan looks up at Virgil then back at Gordon.

"Sleep'll probably help with that," little brother prompts gently, taking his cue to scramble off Gordon's bed and pop up at Virgil's side again. "Right, Virg?"

Virgil nods.

"Sure will, Alan," he replies. "We'll leave you in peace to catch some more zees, but call us if you start to feel any worse, Gordy, alright? Don't let it escalate."

Gordon just barely nods in turn, already well on his way to being fast asleep again. Kayo turns the dimmer down on the lamp until she's got only _just_ enough light to read by, and she presses a finger to her lips, making a little shooing motion with her free hand to usher them out of the room. She's got this, there's no need to hang around worrying. No, sitting still really isn't her thing, but there are always exceptions with the Tracy's.

Alan leads Virgil out, but not without one long, lingering look at his blond partner in crime. He turns his attention slowly back to Virgil.

"Are you gonna go and see Scott now?"

"Yeah," Virgil says as he shuts the door to Gordon's room as quietly as he can behind them. "You coming, too?" he's not sure if it's reassuring or worrying that Scott hasn't used the holocomm he'd left to call him, and he's very anxious to check how his brother's eyes are doing. It should have been long enough to see some improvement, though Virgil is worried about his brother straining them if he takes the bandages off too soon.

"Is… is that ok?" Alan asks, sheepishly tucking himself back under Virgil's arm.

"Of course." Virgil hugs his little brother to his side. "Don't forget he's probably got one heck of a headache from that whack his skull took though. Try to keep it on the quiet side, yeah? His ears are probably gonna be sensitive while they're compensating."


	12. Chapter 12

They make their lopsided way through the villa's living quarters toward the little infirmary that's located in the lower levels, relatively close to Brains' lab - for as much the convenience of the engineer as for its proximity to the hangars. God forbid there be an emergency and the room be inaccessible, after all.

Scott Tracy lays miserably awake inside, having dozed on and off fitfully for most of the night. He'd be staring up at the ceiling if only he could. Instead, it's all Scott can do to just lay there soberly, listening to all the little noises going on around him. The annoying hum of whatever machines it is that Virgil's got him hooked up to have become as familiar as his own heartbeat, though it's increasingly frustrating that, save for the low whir of the extractor fan that's been going ever since he got here, he can't tell the sounds apart without being able to see their source.

_Why does that bother him so much?_ Scott scowls at where the ceiling should be. _He's got plenty of other things to be worried about and yet he's concerned that he doesn't know which machine clicks and which one whirs?!_ He's kind of mad at himself for his own frustration, which, in turn, is even more frustrating.

Suddenly Scott hears the door open with its telltale _snick_ and he turns his head towards it, rounding on the first company he has in feels-like-forever-hours.

"Who's there?" he demands, bristling. "Don't just walk in like that, tell me who's there!"

"Whoa, easy. It's just us, Scott. Me and Alan."

Scott narrows his useless eyes beneath the bandaging at the sound of Virgil's voice. _Freakin' finally._ Does no one realise how long he's been stuck in here, isolated and going out of his mind with boredom?

However many hours it's been awake, it's wayyyy longer than he'd like. Despite the pervasive, eternal exhaustion he seems to have sunk into, the oldest Tracy just couldn't manage to drop off again. Irritation about it is picking at his frayed nerves, anger bubbling toward the surface, fueled by a lack of sleep.

_Beep. Beep. Click. Whirr. Bleep. Bleep..._

The pilot grinds his teeth. Sure, he'd _love_ to be sleeping but there's no way he was going to manage that for long with _all this noise_ and the _thunderer_ of a headache that he's got going on. Someone shuts the door on the other side of the room purposefully loudly.

"Ugh, sorry," Big Brother apologises, lacklustre as he realises he'd been ignoring Virgil and Alan in favour of his internal battle. "I'm a little, I dunno... on edge, maybe." Scott's shoulders roll through a vague shrug.

"Hey, that's understandable," pipes up the youngest Tracy, and Scott hears the light scrape of Alan shuffling his feet closer, heels dragging on concrete. "How you feelin', bro?"

"I'm… uh, I'm ok, Sprout," Scott tells him, hesitant. He's not really ok, not at all, but he doesn't want to further worry his tentative-sounding little brother. His sore fingers bunch fists in his bedsheets. He feels skin split. He hopes blood isn't spotting his bandages. Virgil doesn't seem to react, so perhaps it's ok. "I… Don't you go fretting about it, kid."

But Scott's head is aching something fierce, his pulse pounding at his temple. His hands feel all weird and stiff and painful, sharp and stinging where the skin is newly split over his knuckles. It's nothing compared to the turmoil he's facing about his blindness. It's coiling like a snake around the prey of his agitated mind.

Unbeknownst to Scott, Alan throws a glance over at Virgil, completely unconvinced by Scott's reassurance. Virgil snorts at the kid, amused.

"Yeahhh." The syllable gets dragged out a mile before Virgil gives it up. "We're not really buying that one, Scotty." He sounds far kinder about it than he could have done.

There's a scraping sound as Virgil shuffles slowly into his brother's personal space, his footsteps purposefully loud against the tiles so that Scott will know exactly where he is. He reaches out to pull up the holographic readouts, intending on updating himself on Scott's condition. If big brother isn't going to tell him the truth then Virgil's perfectly capable of finding these things out anyway.

"Mmm," Virgil says, musing. It looks like the swelling has gone down a lot in the eleven hours Virgil was asleep. Not quite as much as he'd have liked, the progress slow, but it's a promising sign that there should be no permanent damage to the elder Tracy's eyes. They won't know for sure until they get the bandages off but Virgil is nothing if not optimistic. He's definitely wary of removing them too soon though, unwilling to expose the delicate optic nerve to stimuli until he's sure his brother's eyes can take it. It's probably going to be a few anxious days before then

Scott's not going to be a fan of that _at all_.

_One problem at a time though..._

"You have to tell us if you're feeling bad," Virgil insists, addressing the problem of his big brother's reluctance directly. "I can't do anything about it if you don't _tell me_ , ok?" He suspects he's being a little stern but Scott's got a thick skull ( _thank god)_ and he's got to try and get the point across _somehow_. "Look, do you need anything? Painkillers? A drink? Food that's _not_ been made by Grandma? I could get some soup on the go?" When they were kids their Mom always used to make them soup when they were sick, Virgil's got a firm belief that it has the power to make any of them feel instantly better.

"Uh…" Scott, conversely, has to physically swallow his distaste at the thought of food. He knows full well that he probably should eat _something,_ but right now, exhausted and irritable, he just doesn't feel like he can face it. Maybe when John makes that pie he promised…

But then Scott gets hit by another thought, joining the worries already pooling in his head: _how can he even eat if he can't see what he's doing?_ _There's no way he can sit upright and hold a spoon and guide it between a bowl of hot liquid and his mouth._ _He'd have to be fed like… hell, like a small child._ Scott locks his jaw. It's mortifying and, frankly, it puts him right off the idea of eating at all. At least a cold drink could be put in a lidded cup with a straw, like they've done plenty of times before when family members are ill, but cold soup is a _no_ and being literally _fed_ by his own little brothers is… well, it's a step too far. _No way._

He may not have his eyesight, but he has his _pride_ , damn it.

A shake of his head is all Scott offers of his internal monologue though, turning his face away from where he can hear his brothers loitering.

"I...I'm not hungry," Scott tells them as the silence stretches too long, "Thanks though, Virg."

Virgil clicks his tongue at him, and there's a shuffle of motion as he messes with something Scott can't see; though really he doesn't _need_ to to know that the family medic is probably adding a nutrition bag to his IV line.

Unconsulted with this decision, Scott feels, if possible, even _worse_.

He feels the pressure of someone, likely Virgil by the size of the dip, sitting on the edge of his mattress and he scowls at them beneath his bandage. The expression gets transformed quickly into a wince though as he feels the action tug at the wounds on his face.

_Ow._ _Freakin' ow._

"Careful." Virgil warns, "You know, Alan just wanted to come and see how you're doing," He tells him lightly and Scott feels one of his brother's big, warm hands rest against his knee over the covers. "I can tell you're trying not to worry him." He sounds ever so gentle. "But if we're honest, all this is worry enough, yeah? Please don't add to it by not talking to him… or by lying and saying you're ok." Scott pointedly looks away again, avoiding eye contact even though his eyes are covered and uncontactable. _Virgil really knows him far too well. Damn it. It's not often that comes back to bite him._ "You're not ok," The dark haired Tracy goes on, "and none of us would _expect_ you to be. You know… you're _allowed_ to feel pretty damn awful right now, Scott. It's alright, yeah?"

"I'm _aware_ ," Scott sighs, heavy and annoyed. He folds his bandaged hands in his lap, the motion frustratingly awkward and clunky. Irritated, he squeezes them together again without thinking about it but all that gains him is racing lines of agony from fingertip to wrist. He drops the action quickly, fingers falling limp. "I do _know that,_ Virgil," He grinds out, swatting away his brother's hands as they swoop in to try and inspect the damage. "I just feel so _useless_ like this. It's so damn frustrating."

"We know, Scott," pipes up Alan's small voice, closer to him than Scott had realised he'd gotten. It sounds like he's crouching beside his bed, timid but present. "T-This isn't your fault," he points out, worried his big brother is stewing in self deprecation. "It's not like you did this to yourself."

"Exactly," Virgil agrees. "Your job now is just to let your eyes heal. That's all you need to do, ok? There's no need to get all frustrated about it."

"Hff. That's about all I _can_ do," Scott mutters under his breath, petulant. "Can't do anything else."

"And what else exactly _do_ you need to do?" Virgil asks, staring, a little baffled at his brother. "You're going nowhere near any reports or anything else like that until Brains and I have medically cleared you."

"And what about feeding myself?" Scott demands. "Or self-care? I refuse to be _spoon-fed_ , Virgil," he counters, the bitterness growing in his voice like a seeping poison. "I can't _do_ anything like this! I can't even see my own bloody hands in front of my face." He waves the painful digits around, far further from his face than he realises and too upset to care about how the raw skin pulls. "Even if I could see, I can't exactly use my hands anyway! I can't _do anything_!"

Virgil sighs heavily, uncertain how to tackle Storm Scott. He knows even the little things are gonna be a real challenge for big brother without the use of his hands or eyes, and he knows all too well how badly Scott takes to needing anyone's help.

"Scott, I know this is difficult for you," Alan starts, small and worried, but it's very much the wrong thing to say as he's cut off by an almost-literal explosion;

"No!" Scott's covers get thrown aside, the older man bristling defensively. "You _don't_ know how difficult this is!" Big brother's famous Tracy temper flares, his fingers bunching so hard against his knees that blood does begin to spot on their crisp white bandages. "You have no idea! I can't _see anything,_ Alan! I can't touch anything! I'm having to rely on my ears and what little I can _feel_ and I hate it!"

"Scott, that's not Alan's fault," Virgil says, his tone heavy with warning. Scott feels the figure beside him shift, poised and ominous. Virgil wishes he could call John to defuse the ticking time bomb. The spaceman's patience has always shielded the younger of them from big brother's more volatile tendencies. "Calm down and leave him alone."

"Calm down?!" Heart pounding with a furious adrenaline, Scott _reacts_. "How can I _calm down_ , Virgil? I'm totally _useless_! You don't get it! I can't see! What if this is permanent and I'm stuck like this _forever_?" He's running straight into his own wall of panic. "I'll never fly again, I'll never run a rescue again, I'll never see..." Scott's voice trails off from, anger bleeding away as exhausted despair filters in. He takes a deep gulp of air, his breathing fast and upset and shaky. "I'll never _see_ you guys again…"

Alan looks up at Virgil, panicked. The sudden outburst had startled him, and he'd backed away. Scott is known for his temper at times, Virgil knows it only too well, vividly recalling the day he'd had to stop him from punching an archaeologist while on a mission, but it rarely flares up this much. But at least now, finally, Virgil thinks he understands.

He puts a hand on Alan's shoulder, squeezing it gently, before he turns back to Scott.

"Geezus, Scott, of course you will," Virgil breathes. "You just have to trust in your body's ability to heal and in Brains' expertise. He's pretty sure it'll all settle down once the swelling goes, remember? ...How often is Brains ever wrong?"

Scott very pointedly tries not to think about the _ceiling-shoes_ or the _nitroglycerine experiment_ or the new ' _thunderising dishwasher'_ that had ended up with at least 80% of the kitchen in flames. But Brains is never wrong about anything that _matters_. Not when their lives are on the line. He'd never give them anything to use that's not been tried and tested and safety checked a million times. _For the most part._

"He did throw me down a snowy mountain in a giant golf ball that one time," Scott points out, dryly, curling his arms protectively around his own waist, injured hands tucked close. "But no." He deflates, energy leaking from him like a faucet that's run dry. "No, I don't think he'd tell me my eyes would get better if he didn't really believe they would."

Virgil laughs, the sound warm and comforting, and a hand the size of a dinner plate settles on Scott's shoulder.

"I'm glad," he tells him, giving said shoulder a gentle squeeze. "Alright now? I know it sucks but it's not gonna help to blow up at us."

"Sorry for shouting, Alan." Scott looks up, guiltily, at the approximate location of his littlest brother and, to his credit, he's only off by several centimetres.

"It's ok." The kid sounds scared and subdued and it's not _really_ ok, not at all. Scott sighs heavily and reaches out both arms toward him, bandaged fingers searching.

"Com'ere, Sprout," Scott requests quietly, when Alan doesn't immediately leap on him. "I shouldn't have freaked out like that, it's not your guys' fault."

Hesitant for only a moment longer, Alan crashes into his arms without any warning. Thin, wiggly arms loop tight around his waist and little brother's face gets smushed up against Scott's collarbone, crushed warm and tight and _safe_ against his sibling.

"'S'not your fault, either," Alan mumbles, his voice muffled by the smushing. "I understand. It's gotta be real scary not to be able to see."

Scott's cheeks flush, highlighting his damaged face, embarrassed.

"I… I guess," he tries to admit, awkward. He hears Virgil laugh at the pair of them from some way away. He sounds relieved.

Feeling strung out as thin as gossamer silk, Scott rests his heavy head carefully against the top of Alan's. His brother's hair is soft as duckling down fluff and, upset with himself, Scott squeezes the kid even tighter for a moment, feeling the responding wiggle as Alan tries to return the gesture.

_Thank god I can feel this,_ Scott muses; hugs from his brothers are one of the most precious things in his world. _Thank god I've got them_. His much younger self would never have viewed four little brothers as a blessing over a menace, but Scott now knows he really lucked out.

"John came to see me," Scott adds over the top of Alan's head, worry for their astronaut creeping into his voice. "He sounded pretty space wobbly, but he did promise me he was going straight to bed."

"I'm gonna look in on him next," Virgil promises. He sounds tired despite sleeping that solid eleven-hour block. "Grandma was keeping an eye on him though...?" He looks to Alan for confirmation and is relieved as the kid nods from where he'd snuggled up against their big brother.

"After I left, yeah," he says. "John's ok though, I think… I guess it's hard to tell 'cause he's so bad at complaining about stuff, but we did think it's just the usual gravity related problems." Scott feels Alan grin against his collarbone. "Been there, done that, ya know?"

Scott leans blindly over him and ruffles his hair with his chin, amused. The kid untangles himself slowly from his older sibling's grip, but he still lingers close, all apparently forgiven.

"Yeah, I know," Virgil agrees. It's not often he's experienced it, but he's not unfamiliar with the awful side effects of prolonged time out of the atmosphere either. "Right, I'll go find the space case." He watches Scott, tucking a supportive arm around Alan's little shoulders and pulling him away as he does. _Kid did good_. "D'you need anything else before I go?"

Scott sighs softly, the weight of the situation curdling in his vocal cords. Without Alan wrapped around him he flops back, exhausted.

"Vision would be nice." He can't help the way that one slips out, moody, smushing the back of his head into the deep, enveloping comfort of his pillow.

"I know, Scott, I know." Virgil gently replaces the covers that were thrown aside during the rant, his voice filters through Scott's pillow all muffled. "I would if I could, I promise you."

"Yeah, I know," Scott whispers, echoing his brother's agreement, heavy with exhaustion and lingering guilt and keen to be left alone to stew in it. "You best go check on John." Virgil nods at him, then remembers why Scott's in the infirmary in the first place and stops.

"Alright," he vocalises instead. Steering Alan toward the door, he hopes that some peace and quiet will give Scott enough reflection time to calm his attitude. "But call if you need me, ok?"

"I will."

Virgil's not entirely convinced by that, knowing full well what his brother can be like for brooding, but there's little more he can do here right now.

"Alright," he repeats. "I'll call in on you again in a bit, try to get some sleep while we're out."


	13. Chapter 13

Virgil leaves the med room with no small amount of reluctance, making his way up towards John's room with Alan plastered to his side. They pass Brains in his lab, busy analysing Scott's blood. A holoscan of their eldest brother's skull, eerily rich with brain matter, glows orange at the genius' side; the awful outline of the swelling highlighted in red. Virgil cringes at the sight of it but forces himself to continue, steering Alan quickly past so the kid doesn't stop and stare. _Brains is monitoring him, he'll be fine, it's ok._ Virgil can go over the newest scans with him later. Right now, he needs to find John - having yet to hear from him has Virgil worrying that re-entry might have been particularly rough.

Skidding to a halt, not having realised he was almost sprinting, dragging poor Alan along, Virgil raps his knuckles anxiously against their Space Monitor's door.

There's a long, silent pause.

Virgil frowns deeply at the lack of response from inside. Alan, at his side, _audibly_ squeezes his fingers together. Virgil exchanges a quick, worried look with him.

"John?" He knocks again, pushing the door open just a crack. "Hey, John I'm coming in, ok?"

The room beyond is quiet and completely dark. Everything is neat and tidy, put precisely away in its place with no kind of clutter left around to make the space look _lived in_ \- though, Virgil supposes, it very rarely is. John's bedside table holds a disconnected holo-clock and lamp and a thin layer of dust; Grandma, of course, having had no way of anticipating the events of last night or their astronaut's sudden return. The little table is a crisp, almost clinical white, same as his built-in wardrobe, desk and furniture, though the colour is offset, at least, by the deep blue feature wall. Even his telescope is monochrome, leaving the main splash of colour in the space to be his bookshelf: every shelf packed with a veritable rainbow of spines. The other colour in the room consists of a number of cacti and small plants under the automatic variegation system he's got set up on his windowsill, including the long dangly philodendron that's grown practically rabid while John's been away. It's sprawled across his windowsill like it's claiming territory, swallowing smaller plants beneath it in its wake.

On his bed, pressed up against the blue wall, John's white sheets are neatly folded back, smoothed into flat, perfect folds. The indent of where a head had been laid on the pillow is the only real indication that someone had slept there recently.

Fretting now, Virgil is almost expecting to find their brother passed out on the floor in his little bathroom or something equally as horrifying, only, as he peers around the adjoining door, there's no sign of him.

Virgil's brows knit together in a frown. John's supposed to be resting. _What's he up to?_

"W-Where's John?" Alan looks up at him all wide-eyed and worried.

"I dunno Sprout." Virgil's teeth bite into his bottom lip, "I hope he's not gotten himself into trouble somewhere…"

He fiddles with the watch at his wrist, but he's reluctant to put a holocall through to John, just in case he's simply fallen asleep somewhere, needing the rest. If it had been any other of his brother's he'd have gotten John up on Five to search for them, but that's... not exactly _viable_ here. He'll try the comms after he's checked the living room sofas or out on the pool chairs. John's hardly the sun-hog that Gordon is, not with that fair burn-able skin of his, but Virgil knows that spending time up in space sure makes _him_ pine for a good old bit of sunlight and fresh air, so maybe John's the same? It seems unlikely, but worth a shot.

"Tell you what, I'll look around up here, and out by the pool, you look toward the hangars. He better not be working down there." Splitting up in their search seems to be the most efficient idea, despite Virgil's reservations - the last time he and one of his little brothers had split up to look for a sibling, Gordon had ended up with a bullet in his thigh. _The island is perfectly safe,_ Virgil reminds himself, though he can't help but think of the time The Hood had infiltrated and tried to take the Island from them. He gives himself a physical and mental shake. _Security's been improved since then, don't let your imagination get away with you_. _John's in no danger from anything but gravity._ "Maybe check in with Grandma, see if he's with her?"

His anxiety mounting, Virgil makes his way downstairs towards the kitchen. _He'd better not be in the living room checking for calls._ Virgil's gonna _literally_ throw John back in bed if he finds him working.

...

The downstairs kitchen-diner is filled with the warm, homely scent of baking pastry and Virgil is viscerally thrown back to being perched on a stool at the table on the family farm, distracting their Mother while Scott sneaks pies that were left for cooling off on the windowsill.

Until he sees _just_ who the culprit is.

"John?" Virgil has to do a double take. "What're _you_ doing up?" he demands, taking in the shell of their brother leaned against the counter top, his head tipped back and his eyes closed. "Geez, you should be in bed if you're feeling that bad," he adds, much softer, taking his brother's arm and gently turning him to face him, scrutinising the spaceman's pale face and dark circles. "Hey, Alan." Virgil takes a second to report in. "You can call off the search party, I've found him." He sneaks his fingers round his brother's bony wrist to measure his pulse and finds it slightly tachycardic. _God_. For a literal genius, John Tracy really is an _absolute idiot._

"I'm making pie," John tells him, which is just _bizarre._ His voice is stringy, and he doesn't open his eyes. The nine point eight m/s² of Earth gravity is evidently a little _too much_ for the astronaut right now.

Virgil stares at him, flabbergasted.

"Did you get space scrambled?!" he demands, sweeping closer into his brother's personal space and pressing a hand to his forehead. John being ill is the _last_ thing they need with Scott and Gordon both out of action. "I can _see_ you're making pie..." Virgil pinches briefly at the bridge of his own nose with his free hand, trying to clear his own confusion. "Look, are you alright? Was the pressure ok on re-entry?" The skin under his fingers is smooth and cool and John tugs his face away the moment Virgil relaxes his grip even a little.

" _No_." He insists, "Well, _yes_ , but, no, I'm not scrambled and yes, the pressure was ok." The spaceman has the audacity to glare all squintily at him. "Geez, Virg, it's for Scott, ok? It's Mom's recipe, the one with cinnamon and the thick apple slices. I wanted to cheer him up." John wipes a tired hand over his face, "Scott's going to wind himself up and get angry and frustrated by the things he can't do without his sight and without full dexterity in his fingers. I suspect that giving him something he can touch, smell and taste will be a good distraction." That shows an awful lot of emotional sensitivity and Virgil can't help but find himself quietly quite proud.

Doesn't mean he's not _mad as hell_ though.

"I can't _believe_ you." Virgil shakes his head, "I thought you were more responsible than this. You _know_ how dangerous re-entry can be. Loss of muscle mass, internal bleeding, pressure punctures, barotrauma, organ failure. You pump yourself full of drugs and just _hope for the best!_ That's not a way to be _living_ , John." He gasps in a breath, aware that John is just staring impassively at him, but he's not done yet; "All these meal plans and exercise regimes and experimental drugs aren't doing enough to keep you going like this. The human body just isn't built for what you're doing to yourself and..."

Virgil breaks off, panting. John very gently takes his arm.

"I just couldn't sleep any longer," John admits, quietly, having patiently waited for Virgil's tirade to end. It's nothing John doesn't know already but if venting is going to make Virgil feel better, less _helpless_ \- as he must feel about their other two brothers, then John is going to let him.

He takes a deep breath of his own, its edges ragged.

"Virgil, look… losing Gordon in that avalanche just keeps repeating in my head over and over like a bad old movie, and then I'd think about _Scott_ and…" He shakes his head, short and sharp, then presses the heels of both hands hard against his achy eyes. Virgil is struck with the complete terror that John might _cry_. He can't remember the last time he ever saw that happen, which really, just makes it all the worse.

"I couldn't sit on my own in the dark anymore, Virg." The spaceman sounds just that little bit _broken_. "It's… like _Scott_. I just…" John crumbles, deteriorating quickly as gravity takes over, and it's only Virgil's quick thinking and strong arms that prevent him from toppling over. John's cheeks, as he moves his hands to break his fall, are still dry, but that doesn't bring Virgil much comfort.

"Oh _John_." Ever the family hugger, Virgil holds his brother tight, ignoring the way John stiffens uncomfortably in his grip. _Get used to it, Spacenoodle, if you're gonna be home and all emotional like this then you're just gonna get hugged._ Virgil feels awful as he wonders how many times he might have been needed in this capacity that he's missed while their ginger brother has been out of the atmosphere. "I get it, yeah," Virgil tells him. "I feel the same, but driving yourself into the ground isn't going to help anyone."

John laughs humourlessly and shakes his head again.

"I know." He rests his forehead against Virgil's shoulder for a moment in a show of surprising vulnerability. "I'm not making myself feel worse on _purpose,_ Virg."

The oven timer decides to _ding_ at that exact moment, and John pulls himself out of Virgil's grasp to go and stoop unsteadily down by it, peering through the glass door at his pie. Virgil has to squash his flutter of worry that John should perhaps _not_ be allowed near four hundred Fahrenheit hot metal when he can't even coordinate his own internal gyroscope.

_He knows his own limits,_ Virgil reminds himself, as John pulls on oven gloves and opens the door, sweet-smelling steam washing over them both. _Just because Virgil wants to protect him all the time, doesn't mean he needs to._

The apple pie has soft, golden-brown, crisp flaky pastry, glazed with egg and sprinkled with crystals of sugar that crackle as John takes a knife ( _should he be holding that?!)_ and cuts Scott a big slice. The filling oozes a little, thick with hearty slices of cooking apple that've been smothered in butter, lemon juice and brown sugar, with a generous sprinkle of nutmeg. He splobs a good dollop of cream un-artistically on top which begins losing integrity quickly, seeping out, all soft and melty, across the dessert.

"It's not _quite_ like Mom's," John complains, holding it up to his eye level for inspection - close enough to his face that Virgil thinks he probably should be wearing the glasses he was prescribed to correct the eyeball-pressure related blurriness he often gets shortly after re-entry. "But," the ginger adds, "I'd wager Scott'll think it's close enough."

Apple pie is the only thing John ever really _bakes_ , aside from the odd loaf of bread here and there. He's hardly got the facilities up on that spacestation of his to be properly _cooking_ anything that doesn't involve rehydration and a microwave, but out of all of them John had perhaps done the most cooking for himself, especially during his time at University and then while he was away from home when he was with NASA.

Scott and himself have little time to cook in between rescues, so it's a real relief from Grandma's fare whenever John's home. As rare as it is.

"Hey, I'm real proud of you, you know?" Virgil tells him, suddenly, and John looks up at him a bit startled, nearly dropping the plate he's holding. "Seriously, I don't think I could even imagine myself doing what you do for any length of time, I…" He trails off, absorbed in the vague horror that one day, all this bouncing between Earth and space is _probably_ going to kill his brother.

"Uh, I'm ok, Virg." The edges of John's mouth turn up just a _little_ into what's probably supposed to be a smile, as he reminds him. "I'm not bothered by the solitude or the workload and the shift between Earth and Orbit is manageable. Now... have some pie." John hands Virgil a plate of his own, followed quickly by a second, then a third. "Take that to Gordon and Kayo for me as well, will you? And let Alan know there's some for him down here as well."

"You not having any?" Virgil observes, watching him set aside the last slice and correctly assuming the other four that his sibling has just plated up on the counter are for Scott, Alan, Brains and their Grandmother. John shakes his head.

"Nah, I'm on oatmeal and weak tea until my stomach settles a little better." John seems almost nonchalant about it, very used to regulating his diet. "Pie's best right out of the oven and all but it'll still be there when I'm feeling more… human."

Virgil nods at him, watching as he boxes up the last slice, sticks a _John's! Do Not Eat!_ label to the top, and slides it into what little space he can find in the refrigerator; crammed between a bowl of something green and suspiciously lumpy that Grandma _might_ be calling stew and a past-its-sell-by half a cabbage that seems to have sprouted all over the place. With up to eight mouths to feed on the regular, the refrigerator is always more than full but, with how busy they are every day, it also gets cleared out far less often than it probably should.

"Alright," Virgil concedes. "But, just… you know. Look after yourself and all that, alright?" Had it been any of his other brothers, he'd probably have hugged them again, but he's pretty sure he's used up his quota of John-hugs. At least for now.

"I will, Virg," John sounds sincere enough to reassure Virgil that his brother isn't just saying that for his benefit. "You're mother-henning." He does point out though. "I think you've got quite enough to be worrying about right now without fussing over me... and that includes looking after _yourself,_ too." John grins. "Now stop trying to channel your inner Scott."

Virgil feels an unwanted blush beginning to creep onto his cheeks. The spaceman might have a fuzzy head and squinty eyes right now, but he can still spot when one of his siblings isn't quite firing on all thrusters. Damn it. Virgil feels _caught_.

"I'm alright, John." He insists, waving his hands (and, dangerously, the _pie_ ) about to try to ward off the concern. "I'm just muscle sore, you know?" He rolls his shoulders backwards, testing the strain in them. The muscle complains where he'd used himself as a battering ram on that bunker door.

"Yeah, I know." John gives him a _pointed_ look, his eyebrows raised. "I _was_ monitoring, remember?" He reminds him as Virgil makes sure to look anywhere but at his brother, embarrassed. "Go on," John continues. "Take those up for me, will you?"

"...Fine, alright," he agrees reluctantly, looking between the precarious stack of bowls he's carrying and his brother. "But you call me if you need anything, right?" He seems to be asking that of a lot of his brothers at the moment.

"I will, Virgil, I will," John insists, trying to shoo him out so that he can get on with cleaning up, but Virgil is not the easiest man to _chivvy_ and instead he stays standing exactly where he is, staring at his brother. "What?" John blinks, wondering briefly if he's got something on his face, "Uh... Are you waiting to be dismissed or something?" Ever fastidious, John starts wiping down the counter top, where it had gotten lightly sprinkled with flaky pastry, raising an eyebrow at his brother.

"Oh, um, no," Virgil mutters, suddenly unsure how to proceed. His fingers tap uncertainty against the ceramic he's holding: it's clear he'd be weaving them in worried knots, or playing out a concerto in the air, had they been free. "It's just… Uh…" He stalls, wondering how to phrase this. "Are you taking that down to Scott?"

"That _was_ the point of making it," John points out, though his tone lacks the kind of sarcasm any of the others would have used. Instead, the spaceman just stares patiently back at him, unsure why Virgil had asked when he clearly should know the answer.

"Yeah, I know, just…" Virgil looks awkward. "Just take it easy with him, alright?" Gentle and empathetic as always, Virgil's found he can't blame Scott for his earlier volatile reaction. He can't even imagine how he'd react in a similar position.

John puts down the cloth and turns fully to face Virgil, leaning heavily on the side as he looks his brother over, considering. Virgil seems tense and tired and John wonders how much of that Scott is responsible for.

"His temper, right?" John shakes his head knowingly and Virgil just nods. "I can't say I'm surprised, really. I imagine, despite what he might say to the contrary, he must have been pretty scared."

"Who wouldn't be?" Virgil points out, "I don't blame him, really. I just wanted to warn you that he really flared up… He laid into Alan something fierce."

John's nose scrunches; evidently deeply displeased that _anyone_ would yell at his baby brother, even if that _anyone_ is one of his own siblings. John's perhaps more protective of Alan than the rest of them put together, though that might just be because he's also far more aware of all the dangers that come with what is essentially strapping a teenager to an ion-fueled- _bomb_ and shooting him at the upper atmosphere with fingers crossed. As a result of John's neuroticism though, the kid's better prepared and a better pilot of Three than any of them; perhaps even more so than their Father had been.

But… He should probably cut Scott needs some slack. Just this once. If John knows his big brother, and he does perhaps almost better than any of them, Scott's going to be stewing hard enough in his own guilt about it by now.

"I'll take up the peace offering." John tips his head quietly toward the bowl of pie. "Hopefully, something to eat will help in the short term."

"Alright," Virgil says, looking down at his own bowls, aware that the pie is cooling fast. "I'm off to deliver these then…" He only hesitates a few more moments more before he finally turns to head out of the room. "Good luck with Scott."


	14. Chapter 14

Reaching the med room door, apple pie in hand, John quietly peers inside. It's hard to tell if Scott's asleep or not. Big brother is lying motionless, his bandaged hands resting calmly over the bedsheets by his sides and his face tilted away from the door.

John steps softly inside, feeling pretty convinced that Scott is probably out for the count, all flat on his back like that. Tip-toeing around surprisingly lightly for a man so unstable in this quantity of gravity, John sets the bowl carefully down on Scott's bedside table and he's getting ready to leave again when Scott's head turns, and the elder Tracy inhales deeply as if sniffing the air.

John nearly jumps a _mile_ back up into orbit.

"Hey, is someone there?" Scott calls out, and the pilot foolishly tries to use his hands to push himself upright, wincing as hot lines of pain shoot up his fingers and curl around his wrists. There's a kind of awkward shuffle as he uses his elbows instead to try and make himself less horizontal. Lying down in front of people makes him feel even more vulnerable.

"Oh, uh… It's just me, Scott," John announces, a little guilty for his assumption that his brother was sleeping. He should really have checked. The astronaut makes his way cautiously over, hovering close, but not _too_ close, to the foot of Scott's bed. John stands there, awkwardly watching his older sibling struggle, unsure how he can help. "I, um, brought pie," he says, finally.

"That's what I can smell!" Scott grins fleetingly up at him. He's both surprised and _very_ grateful that John has followed through on his promise, though... Scott's face falls; he isn't _exactly_ sure how he'll manage to eat it.

"Ah, do you not feel up to it?" John, ever perceptive, asks, tilting his head with the query, even though Scott has no way of seeing him do so. The spaceman knows _exactly_ what it's like to not feel well enough to eat, after all.

"It's not that I don't _feel_ like it…" Scott shakes his head. "That smells _amazing,_ Johnny... but with my hands all trussed up like this," he says and holds the bandaged digits up for John to see, giving them a careful, experimental wiggle, "I'm gonna struggle to hold the spoon and, well... shoot, I can't even _see_ the damn spoon!"

His stomach chooses that exact moment to growl loudly at him and Scott's poor battered cheeks flush a deep pink.

"I could just help," John offers, soft and casual, without addressing the sound. There's a rustle of movement as the spaceman settles himself on the edge of his brother's bed; a lot closer than Scott expected him to. "I get that you probably don't like the idea," John goes on, "but I'm hardly gonna think any less of you for it. We can keep the door closed so the guys don't see, if you want." Scott is even more surprised when he feels a long-fingered hand tentatively rest itself over his own. "I… You know, I can't even begin to imagine how this must feel, Scott. None of us can, really. But we all just want to help. You know that, right?"

Scott sighs.

"Yeah, I know..." He turns his head towards the soft sound of his brother's voice. "I just… you know I hate _needing_ help and… What do I _do_ , John?"

"Uh," John's nose wrinkles, confused. "What?"

"I, you know, if… if my sight never comes back." Scott tucks his chin toward his chest, clearly very uncomfortable but John is just so easy to talk to and it all comes spilling out anyway. "Virg is all confident and all, and Brains came in to reassure me he thinks it'll be fine, but... what if it just _doesn't come back_? I can't live like this." His bandaged fingers trace the linen strip over his eyes ever so lightly. "Not forever. What do I _do_?"

John takes a breath, looking down at the hand still enveloped in his own, taking in the way his fingers have curled themselves around Scott's like an oyster shell protecting its pearl. The spaceman rubs his thumb smoothly back and forth over the bandages, his touch light so that it doesn't hurt, recalling how Scott would do the same for them when they were younger and ill. He hopes it might help some. John's hands are cold with bad circulation though and Scott frowns, concerned that he might not be taking good care of himself. It's not exactly _unlike_ John to suddenly fall flat on his face because his blood pressure has dropped.

"Well, like you said, Brains is sure," John says, unaware of Scott's concerns. "But, well, you adapt, right? You're pretty good at that, you know." A shoulder knocks gently against his own, reassuring. "It'll be tough for a while, no one's saying it won't be. We'll call in the best eye specialists the world has to offer if we have to, but, see, we already _would_ have, if Virgil was worried enough to think it necessary. I'm sure this is something that can be fixed."

Scott feels the typical hesitance to his brother's touch, and he appreciates it even more so because of it. The others are all so tactile, elbows to the ribs, arms flung round shoulders, close, tight-knit hugs woven of too-many limbs and a whole lot of love. But John, despite being a Tracy through and through, rarely shows affection in the same way his other brothers do. So to feel his thumb gently rubbing the back of his hand makes Scott feel like Virgil has just scooped him up in one of those full body bear hugs of his. It's not quite skin to skin with the barrier of the bandages, but Scott can still feel it, ever so light and careful, and the sentiment is no less appreciated.

John's got a kind of magic touch when it comes to wrangling their big brother. He's always been the most calming influence on all of them. John's quiet and reliable and just _so dang good at listening_ , but Scott seems to have benefited the most from the ginger's endless patience and resilience over the years. John's very used to Scott's unstable temper; after all he's been stuck with him all his life - from when they were boys and Scott's fury was directed toward bullies at school to the present day with International Rescue, where Scott's anger is as hot and righteous as ever but it's also known to burn itself out over a private comm channel, with John quietly listening in from up on Five until his brother has run out of steam. John finds he's much more rational and easy to talk down when all his shouting is done.

That quiet patience of John's is the perfect countenance to Scott's quick temper, they're opposites in the same way Mom and Dad were - and they balance each other out perfectly.

John hears his brother exhale loudly again, as if he's letting go of some of that frustration and fear. The astronaut shuffles a little closer, hoping that's the thing to do in this situation.

"Whatever happens, Scott, you're gonna be alright," John tells him, warm and supportive. "You're not going through this alone, you know."

Scott raises his free hand, bandages and all, up to his face, his fingertips lingering again over the woven texture of the fabric that covers his eyes. He probably would have pushed his fingers through his hair had he been able to. As it is, he just nudges at his bandaging, fidgeting all clumsy and agitated. He'd know his brothers were here for him, of course, but Scott doesn't want to admit how much better he feels now John's told him that directly.

The corners of John's mouth quirk up in a small smile.

"Now, how about that pie?" He sounds ever so gentle. "No one's gonna judge you, least of all me." There's the soft huff of what might be a laugh. "You've seen me trying to feed myself when I get down from Five. Even without sight or use of your hands, you'd probably still do a better job than me trying to navigate _gravity_."

There's a soft chuckle from his brother and John feels his heart lift. It'd be a shame the cost to hear it was making fun of himself, but John is rarely bothered by the _gravity centric_ line of teasing all his brothers enjoy dealing out.

"Ah, you've improved," Scott says, blunt fingers nudging teasingly at his brother's wrist. "Not like when you returned home those first few times."

"Haha, very funny," John deadpans. He's glad, at least, to hear some of the playfulness creeping back into Scott's tone. "Still, you didn't give me an answer. Do you want pie?"

There's hesitation from the older man as he chews anxiously on his lower lip.

"It does smell real good," Scott admits, his fingers fidgety.

"I added a touch of extra cinnamon, just the way you like it," John tells him, the persuasive bastard, and Scott's mouth crinkles at the edges into a small smile.

"Alright then."

They sit quietly for a while, John scooping up small portions of pie and helping his brother guide them to his mouth. Neither of them comment again on the indignity of it. Where Gordon or Alan would have laughed and teased him endlessly, and Virgil would have been overbearing with his concern, John is quiet and patient, waiting for Scott to deal with the problem he's facing without comment.

John's good like that.

"This is really good," Scott admits. After the first couple of mouthfuls, the ravenous ball of hunger that was growing in his stomach is starting to abate. "It tastes just like Mom's, I don't know how you do it, John."

"It's not hard to follow a recipe..." John begins to excuse himself, but Scott breaks him off with a shake of his head.

"No, it's more than that," he says. "It's more personal than just following a recipe, it's _exactly_ the right blend of… of whatever it is you've put in here. It…" There's a lump in Scott's throat now, sticky with sugar. "It tastes like _home_ , you know?"

"I know," John says quietly beside him, giving him a moment or two before he offers up another bit. "...Mom'd be really proud of you right now, you know?"

Scott snorts through his nose, unconvinced.

"What, for yelling at Alan and making a right fuss?" He can't believe that.

"No," John gently places the spoon back in Scott's fumbly fingers and guides it to his mouth to shut him up. "For pushing through it, despite how bad things are, or could be. Mom always wanted to teach us perseverance and independence and, though I don't think she'd ever have imagined anything so extreme for us, I do think she'd be proud." John takes a breath, smooth and calm and warm at his brother's side. "Have you got any idea just how many lives you've been part of saving? I do, I keep logs-" because of _course_ he does. "-and it's a _lot_. You helped Dad bring us lot up after Mom died and I know how hard that was. You've taken on way more than the rest of us combined, so yeah, Mom would be proud and, you know what? So are the rest of us, for what that's worth." It's not often that John ever sounds so passionate about anything _inside_ of the atmosphere.

It's also not often that the boys ever talk about their _Mother_ in any great depth. She's often just on the edge of their memories, a reminder in a woman with waves of ginger hair out on a rescue, in a jumper Grandma's dug out of a storage box for Kayo, in John's blue-green eyes.

Those eyes are watching him now, careful and considering. Scott knows they are, and their exact hue, even if he can't see them. He forgets it, sometimes, when John's up in space and his eye colour is sharpened and blued by holographic arrays, but it's not hard to draw their Mother's eyes to mind and remind himself what John's are _really_ like.

He thinks Alan struggles more with that. Scott's not sure how much of their Mother their littlest brother even remembers.


	15. Chapter 15

Scott finds himself surprised as he hears John scrape the spoon along the bottom of the ceramic plate in an attempt to gather up the last few dregs, before pressing the last spoonful into his hand. The pie has all but disappeared while he'd been thinking. Scott shivers, as if suddenly chilled.

"Oh, are you getting cold?" John, consistently perceptive, queries, and Scott feels his sheets move up from his knees to tuck warmly about his waist. "Want me to turn the thermostat up?" The astronaut shifts as if he's about to get up and _leave_ to do as much but there's something primal and _panicked_ that sparks in Scott and he grabs blindly for John's his wrist to try and stop him. His fingers collide with skin and the pilot grits his teeth as pain flares hot all up his arm.

There's a sharp intake of breath that might be a gasp from John.

"I… Don't go." The plea spills out Scott's mouth before he has any chance to stop it. "I, uh…" The sore skin on his fingers _sears_ and his cheeks flush an embarrassed red but there's something deep and terrified in him that just can't bear for John to disappear back into the darkness right now. "Please?"

"Uh… ok?" John sounds tentative, but there's another shift of weight as he sits obediently back down on the bed. Scott's still holding onto his wrist and big brother takes the opportunity to use it to drag him forward into the circle of his arms, sneaking a limb around John's waist and pulling him in close.

John freezes at the contact.

"Uh… Scott?" He sounds uncomfortable, his voice squashed up in front of him, but big brother can't comprehend it right now. The circle of his arms tightens around the spaceman. He _needs_ the physical reassurance of having someone close and the guilt that it's _John_ isn't comparable to the huge well of _being-alone-in-the-blackness_ induced _terror_ that's rising in him.

Scott shivers again, harder this time, and it's not the cold that's causing it.

"Hey, _hey_. Scott?" John pats his forearms for lack of knowing what else to do, held tight in his brother's grip. Scott's _strong_ and John's chest aches. "Take a deep breath for me, think you can do that, bro?"

Scott tries his best to suck in one, good breath. His lungs feel exposed to vacuum.

"Good, that's it." A cool, long-fingered hand rubs a smooth circle over his forearm. An idea forming, John tentatively takes one of Scott's abused hands in his own and brings it up to press against the thin plane of his own chest, right over the faded blue _NASA_ logo on his t-shirt, so that that big brother can _feel_ each of his own breaths, and hopefully match his to them. "Now another, yeah?" Scott does as he's told but his shivers have morphed into a full body kind of trembling that shakes John too with its ferocity. "Hey, you're ok," John tells him, voice full of the kind of calming reassurance he uses on people they're rescuing. "You're not alone in this, alright?"

Scott hadn't realised he'd been mumbling a constant stream of _don't go, don't go, don't go_ out _loud_.

 _Shit_.

"Don't worry about it," John tells him, very soft, and Scott _feels_ the shake of his head, John's soft hair tickling the side of his face. "I don't mind." The tension in the astronaut's shoulders in front of him spells out another story entirely but Scott can't bear not to take him at face value right now. "I'm not going anywhere."

When was the last time anyone had _hugged_ John Tracy? Properly? For more than a second or two?

Virgil knows, but Scott finds he has no idea.

Taking another deep breath, big brother goes to press his face hard into the lithe muscle of the shoulder in front of him, forgetting about the fracture in _his skull_ for just a moment.

It only takes a moment.

It's like the first stone in an avalanche, or stepping on a tail in a room full of spooked cats. Pain ripples through Scott like a tidal wave, curling him forcibly into himself, his skull cradled in both hands like that will in any way help the onslaught. John immediately tries to move Scott around, his hands fluttery and uncertain how to help and, though Scott can't see it, his face has gone all tight and gaunt with worry.

"Scott?! What is it? What's wrong?!"

"S'alright. S'passing." The older of them gasps, going loose and limp behind his brother and resting the whole of his not-so-minimal weight forward against the skinny spaceman, continually pinioning John in place. "S'just my head."

"D-Do you want me to call Virgil?" John sounds panicked still, and isn't _that_ weird to hear from their usually so calm and collected Space Monitor. "Or Brains?" Stuck under his big brother, there's no way John can reach the holocomm from here, and he can't work out how to free himself from Scott's persistent grip without making things _worse_. "Scott? Are you listening?"

"It's goin', it's ok… just…" Big brother clings on tighter. He tries to focus on the feeling of warmth beneath his arms, from where it's radiating out of John's sides and chest. It feels like it's spreading through his own cold chest from where his sibling is a solid, warm wall of _human_ in front of him - consistent and reliable and thankfully steady enough to lean into. John's breathing is hitched and worried but also comforting in a way that Scott has never imagined the feel of another person's pulse and respiration could be. It's real and tangible and something that's not at all like the piercing, searing _awful_ of just now.

Slowly, ever so slowly, the pain fades down to something more background and manageable and Scott tries to relax again. He finds himself patting a fumbly hand over John's tolerant shoulders with numb, senseless fingers, in an effort to calm his own racing pulse. The sharp, stiff feeling in his digits is unlike anything he's ever experienced before. It's like wearing thick gloves made of toffee, though pressing harder to try and feel _through_ that numbness only sparks pain up the digits, the skin all tight and painful.

Releasing his death grip bit by bit, Scott rubs his palms over his brother's back, lingering over the _slightly too prominent_ ridges of John's spine. He combs his abused fingers through the soft, loose strands of ginger hair, murmuring softly about nothing in particular, just enjoying the opportunity to use his sense of touch, kind of impressed that his brother is still letting him. John seems to realise how important this is to him right now. The man has the patience of a saint and Scott could not be more grateful.

"How are you feeling?" John asks quietly, a little while later, when Scott is calm and quiet, all curled up against him. "Still cold?"

"Y-you're warm." Scott nods and his voice comes out rough and thin and he hates it. He's no longer shivering and he feels a lot calmer now, lulled into a softer state by his brother's calm, regular breathing. He rubs John's back again with the arm that's still slung around his waist, loosely hugging him.

"I'm not especially." John points out, thinking of his lower than average core temperature and bad circulation. "It's probably some lingering effects of the hypothermia. Your core temperature is good." He can see the screens monitoring his brother from here.

"Did Virgil ever find you?" Scott asks, worry dawning on him. John is busy trying to wiggle them around so that Scott has more blanket. "He was looking. Alan said you were looking pretty space wobbly, and uh, you did seem it earlier..."

"Yeah, Virgil found me, but if you're going to try and press-gang me back into bed as well you can forget it." John laughs, still a little on edge but recognising the deflection for what it is. He's still well and truly trapped in the circle of his brother's arms regardless. "I'm good, Scott, don't fret." John pats an awkward hand on the top of his brother's head, "Blood pressure, heart rate and resps are all within normal reading parameters. I'm a little unsteady but it's nothing out of the norm, ok?"

"Sorry." Reassured, Scott goes to drop the subject. "...How's Gordon?" He can't seem to stop worrying about one brother or other entirely though. Had it been anyone but John, they'd have probably laughed at him.

"I don't know," John says quietly, instead. "He's alright, I think." He ponders. "If Virg's got enough time to be worrying over me then it can't be at crisis point, but I've not had a chance to see Gordon just yet."

"Speaking of chances… any chance of more of that pie?" Scott, trying to put some sense of _normality_ back in place between them, tries his best to weedle. "How about it, Johnny?"

John gives him a _look_ over his shoulder. It's almost a shame that Scott misses it completely.

"I don't know anyone called 'Johnny'," the astronaut says, pointedly.

"Yeah, well, _I do_." Scott grins right back at him, all pearly whites. He still feels trembly and _off_ but this light banter brings with it something familiar and secure and _better_. "Suck it up, Spaceman." He feels the despairing shake of his brother's head against his shoulder.

"There's another slice boxed up in the fridge, if you're still hungry," John offers without a second thought for the _John's! Do Not Eat!_ label that's stuck to it _._ "Or I can have a go at making you something proper."

"That might be a good idea. Grandma came in earlier and I had to pretend to be asleep for _forty-five minutes_ so that she didn't try to spoon-feed me something that honestly smelled of old cabbage."

John snorts at him, amused.

"You dodged a bullet there, but, uh, you'll have to let me go if you want me to make you dinner." He points out.

Scott just shakes his head.

"Not just yet," he pleads quietly, his chest hitching again. "Give me… I just need…"

"Ok, ok, it's fine." John sighs and a hand comes out of nowhere to smooth down the side of Scott's hair, wary of the bandages. He'd have expected this of Alan, maybe Gordon, but Scott and _clinging_ aren't exactly synonymous. Especially when it's him and not Virgil who's being subjected to said clinging. "Do you want me to, I dunno… read to you for a bit?" he suggests, figuring that if he's trapped here for the foreseeable he might as well get something out of it.

Scott contemplates the idea for a moment, recalling how, when they were little, it was him who would read to John. Once he'd learned how to read, narrating aloud to his brother's was his favourite thing to do. Soon as John learnt though, it was all space books way above Scott's comprehension, so they haven't _read_ to each other in a long time. With a jagged smile, Scott nods.

"If you like." He mumbles into the back of John's neck. "As long as it's not one of your boring doorstop textbooks."

"Gee, thanks." John, author of plenty of said textbooks, says dryly behind him. He reaches out and is able to just about grasp hold of the holocomm so that he can pull up a book to read from. It's not as good as the real thing to the spaceman - there's something deeply lacking about the experience compared to real old-fashioned ink and paper, but for now it's fine.

"Will The Hitchhiker's Guide do?" John asks, finding one of his classic favourites at the front of his digital library. He feels Scott nod, silent, and flicks open the ghostly replica of the book. He has the real thing somewhere on his own bookshelf, batted and dogeared from years and years of re-reading. Their Father gave it to him when he couldn't have been older than six or seven and he almost knows it by heart. John barely has to look at the first few lines as he reads them aloud;

"In the beginning," John starts, his voice calm and even, "the universe was created." There's a little pause, "This made a lot of people angry and has been widely regarded as a _bad move_..."

As John goes on, Scott finds he makes a surprisingly solid bulwark in front of him; it's the kind of stability big brother would expect of Virgil more than their skinny ol' spaceman. Each of John's even breaths raises Scott's arms an inch or two in a way that's kind of pleasant and, by the end of the chapter, Scott finds the world seems comfortably quiet again - as if he's slipped from the loud, restless agony of his own into the peaceful, calm state of John's.

Distantly, Scott decides that he's going to start calling it the _John Effect_.

Big brother lets it all unspool around him, the world narrowing to just the intermittent warmth on his shoulders and the rise and fall of his brother's chest. The gentle bleep of machinery all around them has become distant and reassuring and the repetitive _swish_ of the replicated page being turned blurs into nothingness.

The spaceman doesn't notice when Scott behind him snugs closer, shifting to grip his own opposite wrist loosely so that his arms fully encircle John again, but he does notice as the man's weight gradually goes boneless and his head sinks down to rest at the junction between John's neck and shoulder.

Big brother is warm and relaxed, his deep slow breaths pressing his ribs into John's back, entrusting his weight to his brother as limply and fully as a child down for the count. Despite his limpness, the man is in no danger whatsoever of falling out of bed. Even though his poor battered hands are now curled loosely on John's chest, the circle of his arms gradually slipping, John has hugged his brother's forearms to him, sandwiching them to his sides with his elbows, to stop him from toppling over, and, thus... finding himself pinned all over again.

That's how Virgil finds them, less than half an hour later. Scott slumped over his spine and John three hundred and twenty pages deep in the holo-book he's projecting from his Comm.

Virgil makes several funny, half-aborted motions that are probably a pantomime attempt at the word _bed,_ before he gives up and mouths _Is he asleep?_ at John while wildly pointing between the pair of them, not wanting to speak for fear it might disturb Scott. John nods his head, amused, flashes Virgil just the edge of a smile, and gives him a thumbs-up.

Virgil nearly whoops, though he rapidly has to suppress the urge for fear of waking the source of his joy. As far as he's concerned, it might just be a miracle; and not _just_ the _John-is-being-hugged_ thing.

 _Help me out here?_ John mouths back at him and Virgil graciously takes pity on his ginger sibling and moves to help extricate Scott's octopus limbs from his waist. Scott goes along with the separation with no sign of waking; there's not the smallest twitch as Virgil helps John settle their big brother back down against his pillows.

No one has trusted him like that in a long time, the spaceman realises.

John thinks back to small brothers falling asleep piggyback, a long time ago, and tells himself his eyes are getting watery from just… uh... the _obvious_ dust in this sterile environment.

Yeah, that one's not gonna fly with Virgil.

He must be tired as well.


	16. Chapter 16

John, prompted by a meaningful _look_ from Virgil, had left Scott's side just as Brains had materialised; the engineer's hair rumpled and holodiscs of medical scans spilling from his arms. John leaves the whispering pair setting up scans over his brother's sleeping head with no small measure of worry about what they're up to.

 _They're just keeping an eye._ John tells himself. _It's sensible to be precautionary. There's no way he'll be blind forever..._

On the trail end of that worry, the young astronaut decides to look in on Gordon on his way back to bed. It feels a little early to sleep but there's a pressure headache building behind John's eyes and his sugar levels must be low because his hands are getting shaky. He'll have to he'd Virgil's advice sooner or later. He grabs a bowl of oatmeal from the kitchenette to settle the score, then heads back up toward the corridor of their rooms.

Alan, evidently the chosen babysitter for the evening, grins sunnily up at him as a ginger head pops around the door. John can't help but muster up an exhausted replica of his own at the sight of it. The kid waves vaguely at Gordon then gives him a double thumbs up, which is reassuring. Gordon is flat on his back, fast asleep, but the bowl of apple pie on his bedside table has been scraped clean.

John's smile gets a bit more real, then wavers.

Gordon's swirl of ice cream scoop hair is flattened against the pillow and his face is very pale, eyes closed and darkly circled. John's disturbed by the stillness of his brother in a way he can't quite pinpoint. He supposes that it's because Gordon is, inherently, the embodiment of perpetual motion: he just can't stop _doing_. Seeing him lying so still, even in sleep, is… yeah, unnerving.

John knows his way around a VSM, a vital signs monitor, as well as any of them do and the readouts aren't all that reassuring. Gordon's blood pressure, blood oxygen levels, temperature, pulse rate, perspiration, adrenaline levels, and respiration all glow in various traffic light shades of worrying, though not urgent.

The spaceman doesn't stay long after that. It's far past time he went to find his own bed.

...

The laundry done; washed, ironed and sorted into the eight individual cubby holes ready for their owners to collect them, Grandma Tracy tucks a stray pair of Gordon's tropical pants into where they belong and shuffles her tired old bones back up toward the unusual quiet of the villa.

When all of them are home the place is usually a hive of constant activity. Alan takes on a perpetual kind of impish glee, the sort that feels like being the one who licks the icing spoon or getting to splash in the shallows. He fizzes with it, all big popping-candy grins and delirious excitement that he gets to see his space-oriented brother in person. When John's home, Grandma finds herself quickly worn out by having to keep a much closer eye on Gordon. The second youngest meets John with eyes wide and a grin even wider; his head full of _plots_ involving duct tape, sticky labels and stolen shampoo bottles, the family Goldfish fully intent on making up for lost time. Ruth becomes the careful mediator who makes sure he doesn't pull _too_ many pranks on his most wayward sibling. After all, none of them will ever forget the time he had managed to, somehow, rearrange the precise planets on John's orrery. Simple fun on the surface but it had taken John two hours to reset the methodical mechanisms and reorder the planets and John had been quietly furious; deeply displeased at the complete waste of his time. He'd been impossible to get a straight answer out of for days. Virgil, in comparison to the younger two, goes into medic mode at the instant of touchdown running around headless chicken style intent on helping John find anything he needs; water, painkillers, another pillow? Anything John, anything! Scott makes a scene of fussing just as bad, if not worse.

She's heard him called _Smotherhen_ more than once. Takes after his Mom like that. Lucy had always been ever so careful with her boys, and Scott seemed to take on that duty after her passing with double the fervour.

 _He just doesn't want to lose any more Tracy's,_ she thinks, morbidly. _Poor boy's had enough of that for a lifetime._

Ruth makes her shuffling way across the long dining space and finds that, as it is right now, the villa is quiet... and Ruth does _not_ like it.

She makes her way to the kitchen and looks around. It's been spotlessly cleaned by some (likely _ginger_ ) miracle. But… the emptiness, the lack of crumbs and clutter and dirty plates, it makes it feel like it's been abandoned.

 _Ah_ , _well, almost abandoned_ , Grandma Tracy spots Kayo leaning against the counter by the coffee machine. The younger woman holds up an extra mug, her eyebrows high, and it draws a tired smile onto the elder's face.

"It's like you read my mind, dear," Ruth approaches, her voice warm with fondness.

"I think we're all in need of a little extra caffeine," Kayo retorts as she makes up the brew, sweet and milky, just how their Grandmother likes it. "Though don't tell Scott I said that, he drinks too much of the stuff already."

"Mmm," Ruth murmurs in judgemental agreement, her lips pursed as she takes the steaming mug from the young woman. "He really does." She shakes her head before taking a long draught of the warm liquid, sighing with satisfaction. "Mmm, perfect, thank you."

Kayo smiles at her, light and pretty as sunshine through fine linen, glowing from inside to out, and she picks her own mug up again, leaning back against the counter.

"It's been an intense day or two," she comments quietly, watching nothing in particular above her. "Two of the boys out of action and, I hate to say it but Virgil's not far behind them if he doesn't rest a bit more instead of chasing round behind them all. He might not be as badly injured as Scott and Gordon, but he's been looking pretty stiff and sore."

"They're all as bad as each other when it comes to having more concern for anyone else over looking after themselves," Ruth shakes her head, then dips it to sip at her coffee. "Those boys are just like their parents." She clicks her tongue against the roof of her mouth in mock displeasure.

Kayo laughs, the sound warm and fine as windchimes in a summer breeze.

"Very true." Her cheeks dimple, "Alan and I can handle any calls we might get for now. John should be on his feet again soon and we've got Max and Brains ready for action… if we can talk Brains into leaving that lab of his for the field, that is." Ruth laughs with her, "What they all just need right now is plenty of rest."

…

For Scott, Virgil and Brains had decided, after much discussion, that there wasn't really much need at this point for him to remain trapped in the med room, taking up space and balling up frustration. The swelling behind his eyes that's been pressing on his optic nerves has gone down considerably in the last twelve hours, and they're all relieved to know there shouldn't be any permanent damage to them. They won't know for sure just yet though, as Virgil wants to keep them covered a while longer to prevent Scott from straining them and potentially making the long term health of his eyes much worse.

 _He'd look ridiculous in glasses,_ Virgil frowns, _at least John's suit him._ Scott scowls up at him like he can hear what his brother is thinking.

"Hey, it's just twelve or so more hours, ok?" Little brother promises, his voice thick with apology. "Could be twenty four though if any of that swelling flares up again." It's always best to give Scott the straight truth from the start, he works better with the facts all lined up in front of him, ready to be shot down one goal at a time. They had allowed Scott to wake naturally again before they broke the good news and he still seems pretty tired, like his sleep had been restless. "How'd you feel about heading up to your own bed now?" Virgil's pretty sure that big brother will sleep far better in the comfort and familiarity of his own room and rest and recovery is priority one right now.

Besides, John has worked his magic and Virgil wants to keep it that way.

Scott sighs and nods and even acquiesces to being helped up out of bed and up to his room. It feels so weird to be back up here and Scott finds himself frowning as he's settled further into his pillows.

It would probably feel better if he could see everything, but he'll take whatever he can get at this point. He'd gotten so sick of the sanitised smell and the hum of machinery. Or, at least, he'd thought he was. Now, left alone by Virgil to get some more sleep, it's strangely quiet and, oddly enough, Scott finds he almost misses the smell of the cleaning products.

Naturally, he's familiar enough with his room to know at least approximately where everything is. He can feel warmth on his cheek, the sun must be shining in through the window to his left. He can feel the familiar smooth cotton texture of his bedsheets, and he can almost convince himself he can see the reassuring red glow of light behind his eyelids... though maybe he's just being optimistic. Virgil _had_ given him a lecture on not messing with those damn bandages. One hand rises to check and… yep, there's the thick weave under his fingers. Damnit.

Tilting his head, Scott knows his right hand bedside table holds the clock and that battered old copy of _To Kill A Mockingbird_ their Grandpa had given him on it. Not that he can read it right now, but reaching out a hand cautiously at least informs him he's correct and it's right there. He picks it up, thankful that those horrible gloves and the thick protective bandages have been replaced by thinner, softer ones that allow for a greater range of movement. His skin is still very tender, but the new bandaging has given him back much of his ability to feel, so he runs his fingers across the cover, gratefully feeling every nick and tear around the edge of the cover, the bumps and ridges down the spine where he'd read it so often. He thumbs the pages, letting them flick through as he lifts the book closer to his face, creating a breeze across his cheeks and breathing in that scent of old book. Carefully, he places it back down on his bedside, nudging his clock slightly in the process, though luckily he doesn't knock it down.

The small chest of drawers to the left of his bed, closest to the window, holds a few photo frames. Unlike the book, he can't bring himself to pick them up. After all, _what good is being able to feel the detail of the frames when_ _you_ _can't see the subjects pictured within?_ In his mind's eye though, Scott can see them clearly. The first, one of him and his father when he graduated high school, the second of his parents' wedding day, the third of him with all his brothers; much younger at the time, round-faced and unaware of the horrors of the world that were to affect their happy little unit.

_Damn The Hood._

Scott can't wait for the day when he'll be able to see those photos again… and even more so because that'll be the day he'll see his brothers for real again as well.


	17. Chapter 17

"Virgil?" Alan's voice crackles through the line. "Hey, could you watch Gordon for me for a bit? I wanna go take a shower and maybe grab a bagel." Bagels are quick and easy and are eaten plentifully in the Tracy household when the time simply isn't there for a full meal; which, any of them will admit, is more often than not. "I haven't had any dinner and…" The kid breaks off with a yawn and Virgil feels a little guilty that no one's been up to send him to bed. "Mmm, I don't think Gordon's had anything either."

"I'll bring him something up," Virgil promises warmly. "Be there in five, Sprout. Thanks for keeping an eye on him for us."

Alan snorts through his nose at that, as if thanking him is absolutely ridiculous.

"What did'ya think I was gonna do?" His little hologram shakes his head, face all scrunchy. "Leave my partner in crime to fend for himself? Don't be dumb, Virg."

Alan is quick to dash out and squeeze Virgil in a tight hug when he gets up there, but he disappears off in the direction of the kitchen without a backwards glance shortly after.

 _All this is a lot to ask of the youngest of them_ , big brother supposes as he pushes the door open, _After all_ _Alan's only… Oh!_ Virgil finds himself blinking at a hazy pair of brown eyes that are watching him from the bed. He'd not expected to find Gordon's awake, though the younger of them seems none too pleased about it as he groans theatrically at the sight of him and slings an arm over his eyes.

Virgil laughs at him. He can't help it. Gordon always manages to make him laugh.

"Hey, buddy." Virgil sits carefully on the edge of Gordon's mattress and finds himself grinning as the aquanaut cracks one eye back open, squinting out at him from under that arm. "I know it's getting late but... I did bring you a sandwich!" Big brother holds the floppy slices of bread between them like they're the sweet, greasy holy grail, and Gordon instantly begins to struggle upright, his hands intent on seeking out the sparse meal. Virgil would move in to help but the gentle giant knows his brother's limits perhaps better than even Gordon himself does - his help isn't needed right now and Gordon values his independence just as much, if not more so, than Scott.

Stubborn, the whole lot of them. It's practically the definition of the name _Tracy_ at this point

"Mmm… Is that peanut butter?" Gordon cracks a tired grin that drags Virgil back to the present. "And jelly?" He notices the purple leaking from the sides. "I _love_ you."

Virgil laughs at him again for that. He'd think Gordon's drug dose is too high if such declarations over the trivial weren't perfectly Gordon normal.

Virgil keeps a close eye, impressed, as the aquanaut manages to much his way through the whole sandwich, even though it's kind of on the _stuck-to-the-roof-of-your-mouth_ side of the proper peanut butter balance. A glass of water, cold and filtered, helps free up his tongue and encourages his next set of pills to settle. These for the pain, these to prevent infection, these to reduce inflammation. It was a lot, though nothing compared to what he had to take for his broken back, years ago, but still raw enough in his memory.

Gordon rubs a hand over his ribcage as he lies back down, letting Virgil's big, warm hands guide him. There's a kind of syrupy pressure in his chest, probably some kind of side effect of the hypothermia, and the frostbite across his cheeks and the bridge of his nose is starting to burn again for sure. Little brother squeezes his eyes shut and groans, hoping the tramadol is going to kick in again soon.

"Alright, bud?" Virgil asks softly, concerned, but Gordon only nods, clearly trying to collect himself, compartmentalize the pain.

As he does, Virgil takes a second to line up this Gordon Tracy - hollow-cheeked and pale - with his memories of his little brother. A kid, once, blond hair in a disorganized spill across his forehead, an easy crooked smile in the reflection of a rearview mirror. A teen waving Olympic gold for the Butterfly up to the TV cameras with adrenaline-shaky hands. Then... a little older and a terrifying crash of metal and water, the hydrofoil flipping nose over stern. The fire, the terrible spinal damage and the ' _he'll never walk again'_ that Gordon Tracy was too damn stubborn to heed. The months of physical therapy and recovery, Virgil patient and gentle by his side, big strong teddy bear arms there waiting to catch him when he stumbles and falls. To prop him up over and over against the parallel walking bars when Gordon would hiss ' _again'_ and ' _again'_ and ' _again'_ from between determinedly clenched teeth.

He's going to have to use the old crutches again for a while now, to keep the weight off that leg. Maybe even the old wheelchair.

Gordon'll hate being stuck in that thing again more than anything.

Virgil, unable to help himself, keeps glances backwards at the displays, watching his brother's skin temperature and heart rate. Gordon must have caught his slightly pedantic monitoring as he shoots Virgil a dirty look. The younger man drags the blanket up over his head, hunching his shoulders and dropping his head out of sight under the neat, precise thread pattern, so he can't be _observed_ anymore. Kid hates that, Virgil knows; being _observed_. It reminds him of the way they had all kept such a close eye on him after the crash, Doctors and Tracy's alike, as if any little thing could cause him to fall apart at any moment.

"Ack, sorry Gords." Being 'watched' makes him feel weak when, really, Virgil doesn't think he knows anyone stronger than his little brother. Still, the machines keep a good measure of core temperature and heart rate and Virgil just can't help his fastidious observance of them. It's so reassuring to see that they're both within normal parameters. Not _normal_ normal, but Gordon's current normal for sure.

Gordon grumbles about it a bit more, but he settles down pretty soon after, obviously exhausted. It's not long until he falls asleep but Virgil stays there anyway. Counting breaths, watching the unconscious flex and pull of the boy's fingers as he sleeps, all curled in the edge of the blanket.

 _Huh._ Virgil huffs a heavy breath out of his nose. _He still just looks like a little kid, all tuckered out after a long day playing in the cornfields and in amongst the little grove of trees up by the pond._

Gordon's face is empty and smooth and oh so young. Far too young for any of this to happen to them, Virgil thinks, as only an older sibling can. Gordon, Alan... they're clever and capable and irreplaceable in the field but they're both just so damn young.

Virgil's still worrying over it as he falls asleep in the hard chair by his brother's bed.

...

_Ugh._

It's way too early to be awake.

Virgil is a blurred shape beyond the confines of Gordon's bed and the frayed tassels of his blanket. Mom's blanket, all itchy wool and sharp angles of oceanic colour. His name embroidered dedicatedly at the hem. Virgil's fast asleep, his head tilted back at an awkward angle and his mouth hung just that little bit open. He must be shattered. Turning his head so he can see him properly, Gordon finds his big brother is sprawled in the armchair by the bed, his legs stretched out in front of him and a holo emitter held loosely in one big, pale hand - whether he was reading or keeping tabs on Gordon, it's unclear. He's still in his daytime clothes though, no pyjamas in sight. Boots, jeans, white t-shirt, red checked shirt. Splodges on paint on his cuffs. Dirt still under his nails despite his recent, rushed shower.

The bunker had been _filthy_ , no wonder…

Gordon sucks in a tight breath, his fingers knotting themselves in the blanket, squeezing the fabric hard against his palms. He doesn't want to think about the bunker. About being _shot_ and left in the dark and how _cold_ it w…

Trying to distract himself Gordon twists his head further to try and look at his brother better in the weak light. The chronometer is turned away from him, but it can't be earlier than five or six am and big brother is firmly out for the count. Virgil's eyes are underscored by dark circles that have nothing to do with the shadows being cast around the room.

Gordon doesn't have the heart to wake him. It's ok. He's felt _worse_ for sure. Ever so tentatively, the blond Tracy manoeuvres a shaky hand outside the blanket, laying it flat against a patch of blue on the thick fabric. He focuses on the texture of the weave under his fingertips and watches the daylight, creeping in his window, make the intrepid journey from his pinky to forefinger to thumb.

The miserable, pooling heat in his leg had woken him sometime before dawn. It's a low, awful throb that pulses with each beat of his heart. He doesn't want to wake Virgil to ask for more painkillers. Best to stay low and slow and to watch the sunlight crawl. Gordon finds himself taking small, lethargic sips of air, just enough to limit his movement, to avoid lighting up that neat circle of stitches again.

...

The thin sunlight has gone a warmer shade of gold by the time Virgil wakes, with a start. Gordon is curled into a ball, feeling sorry for himself. He's tired and sore and _hungry_ and all he really wants is a pain pill or two to knock down the warm, prickling discomfort in his leg.

"Getting shot _sucks_." The first thing he hears is Gordon's voice, and it comes out hoarse and heavy with injustice. "I want a new leg please."

"Huh, don't you say that in front of _Brains_." Virgil is up like a shot and crouched dutifully at his little brother's side with a glass of water and three round tablets before Gordon can waste another breath on complaints. "He might take you seriously and start building you a robot limb. How long have you been awake?"

"Hey, that'd be cool." Gordon seems unphased by the warning, more concerned with swallowing down the drugs than Virgil's amusement. "Bet he could make it waterproof and everything."

"Heavy though." Virgil shakes his head, fond and disparaging. "You'd sink to the bottom of the pool like a stone. You'd have to grow gills for real." He teases.

"Nah." Gordon throws his head back into the pillow again, eyes squeezed closed. "Brains 's a genius. He'd make it of some crazy light metal. Or carbon fibre or something. Y'know?"

"Sure kid." Virgil snorts through his nose. "Is the tramadol kicking in?"

"Mmmm, ye _p_." Gordon pops the p, peeking through his eyelashes at the mountain perched at the side of his bed. "Would kill for a cheeseburger though. W'time is it?"

"Eight AM." A glance at the holographic chronometer tells him and Gordon groans loudly at the information. "Not exactly peak cheeseburger hour I'm afraid."

"Ugh, horrifying." The aquanaut complains, never one to be up before at least eleven if he can help it. "Truly awful. What kind of twisted punishment is this anyway? Eight am is _the worst_. I'm not built for thissss..."

"Oh, shut it you." Virgil swats lightly at his whiny brother's arm. "Horrifying or not, you're awake and I'm awake and I think a certain early bird spaceman could probably be persuaded to make us some breakfast."

"John's home?" Gordon perks up considerably at this and his covers get shoved down to his knees, careful of his bandaged thigh, in a sudden eagerness to get out of bed. He has to give his breathing a moment or two to settle before he can pull the blanket off entirely and start awkwardly trying to drag himself into a seated position. "No one told me _John_ was home!"

"Been a bit busy I guess." Virgil seems sheepish, his hands fluttery and wary of helping without a direct request. Watching Gordon's slow and strenuous drag into to an upright position is torture, but he knows from the months of PT they did together that there are things Gordon needs to do himself, which brings him to... "Uh…" Virgil's nose wrinkles. "You're not gonna be able to walk on that, you know."

Gordon groans loudly once again.

"Yeah, I know, I…" His arms feel too shaky for crutches he's going to have to… _ugh_ … "There's _nothing_ I hate more than that damn wheelchair." Gordon sounds vehement.

"I know." Virgil makes it practically an apology. "But worth it for John's pancakes? Right?"

"I knew there was _something_ we should keep him around for. The pie yesterday was pretty damn good as well." Gordon tries to drag up a grin from his endless reserves of them. Still… _the chair_. _Ugh_. A hand gets wiped over his face, once, then twice. He _could_ ask Virgil to bring breakfast up here for him, and big brother would probably comply but… Gordon's getting sick of being trapped in his room and he _does_ really want to see John. "Alright, _fine_." he agrees, eventually. "Go get the damn thing then, will you?"

Virgil complies silently, fetching said 'damn thing' from wherever in _hell_ it's been stored. He offers his arms out, steady and stable, just in case little brother needs help getting up.

Gordon wraps his fingers round Virgil's thick forearms without comment, his teeth gritted as he heaves his leg to the side, shuddering as his feet meet the cold floor. Virgil goes to transfer him into the chair but there's something in Gordon that has him reaching out, snagging Virgil's sleeve in clutching fingers and leaning hard into him. He presses his head into Virgil's shoulder. The cold of the wood floor soaking up into his bare feet. His hair a sweaty, messy spill across his forehead, tickling his big brother's collarbone.

Virgil finds the back of his head with a careful hand, cupped and cradling. He can hear his little brother's breath stagnating in his chest, the sound short and trembly. Big and little. The perfect duo. The dream team.

_Virgil carrying him out of the cold, his brother's blood slippery under his fingers._

"Hey," Gordon says hoarsely.

"Hey," Virgil replies, snaking his arm around to return the hug as much as he dares. His mouth meets the top of the tangle of blond and presses itself there.

Together they breathe out something like gratitude, something like exhaustion.

They're all still here. They made it through. _Gordon_ made it through. It's going to be a struggle but it's got to be all upwards from here. He made it _out_.

Gordon pushes away first and there's a weary facsimile of the good old Gordon Cooper grin there, the one from after the accident that doesn't reach his eyes, the one Virgil knows well enough not to comment on.


	18. Chapter 18

By the time they get down to the kitchen-diner Gordon’s grey in the face, every muscle a bundle of high-tension wire wanting to be _out_ of the chair.

John’s there, as predicted, leaning back against the kitchen cabinets in a much more casual way than Virgil had found him yesterday. He makes his way cautiously toward them at the sight of the pair and Gordon rolls his eyes at the blatant concern. 

Virgil parks him neatly next to the breakfast bar and Gordon is instantly trying to stand. Big brother hovers close as he climbs up onto a breakfast stool, Gordon’s fingers white as he holds onto the edge of the table for dear life. His leg groans in the exact way his throat wants to, so he swears quite a lot instead, the bright cinders of pain dulling down a little too slowly now he’s settled. He’s just glad John doesn’t scold him for it.

“Gordon.” John’s tall and lanky and relieved as he strides over and reaches out a tentative hand to pat the aquanaut’s shoulder. “It’s good to see you up.” Gordon grins warmly up at him, kind of thrilled to have him here. Their spaceman's really not home nearly often enough - to the point where it's become almost weird to see him in the flesh, and not just as a pale blue hologram.

It’s funny because Gordon and John probably have the least in common of them, all at the core of it. They're like chalk and cheese. The sun and moon. Gordon is wild and exuberant; untameably colourful and John is just so quiet and clever in contrast; all bleached out by life in space. But, Gordon’s come to realise, gold rank in NASA pools is not so different from gold in the Olympics as you'd think and Gordon and John are just as similar as they are different. Like the sea and sky; wildly different and yet so bizarrely similar because, at the core of it, they're both International Rescue blue.

After all, the void of the ocean and the void of space aren't that different at all, when you get down to it. They both live their lives reliant on oxygen tanks and strict rules and the fear that if even the littlest thing could go wrong it could present a life-threatening problem. But then, many of their rescues are like that. 22,400 miles into orbit there wasn’t a lot that John, specifically, _could_ have done for Gordon or Scott, except to be the constant voice on the other end of the Comm line, praying to hear _anything_ , _anything at all_ , and that feeling of helplessness is about as _crushing_ as the pressure of the depths of the ocean.

“Can I get you guys anything?” John offers, already wandering away, back toward the kitchen. “Uh, a drink or something?”

“Coffee?” Gordon perks up considerably at the offer. 

“Ah, let me,” Virgil insists, quickly making his way over to their astronaut brother. Gordon always burns the coffee, he’s lost count of how often he’s had to remind him not to pour boiling water directly onto the granules, and John, hideously converted to a _tea_ drinker by the Lady Penelope, never makes it strong enough, but Virgil’s a god of the cafetière and a mug of steaming dirty bean water with cream and a good heaped spoonful of sugar gets quickly pressed into Gordon’s grateful hands with a cautionary;

“It’s hot.” 

Gordon burns his tongue anyway, the sensation sharp and prickly, but, pacified by the instant heat that blooms bright in his stomach, he doesn’t much care. It was so _cold_ and… Gordon’s hands are shaking, and he tries to hide it by pressing the mug down to the table.

He doesn't get as much of a kick from the coffee as he’d like from it though, and he feels kind of betrayed when Virgil sheepishly admits its decaf.

“... It’s a bad idea with your meds.”

“Breakfast?” John, a master of subtle deflection, offers just like they hoped he would. “I was making oatmeal but there’s cereal or toast, if you’d rather.”

“Are you not _bored_ of oatmeal?” Virgil asks, part genuinely, part in humour. His brows crease as they watch their brother dig a bowl from the cupboard, John pointedly ignoring the jibe. He’s looking considerably steadier than he was the last he’d seen him and that’s a big weight off Virgil’s mind. “We were hoping for pancakes, if you feel up to it.”

“Pretty please?” Gordon makes a show of batting long, honey lashes at big brother, his voice syrupy sweet. “With a cherry on top?” John laughs at that, the sound short but warm. 

“I think I can manage that for you.” He’s already getting out the pancake pan. “I’ve never been in this kitchen so much.” He comments, and isn’t _that_ a damn tragedy.

The astronaut turns away to focus on the stove, pleased to be useful to them, and Gordon nudges his arm against Virgil’s, who’s sat beside him, keeping an eye.

“He’s gotten skinny again.” Gordon sounds disgusted, nodding at the sharp ridges of their spaceman’s turned back and watching the way the muscles in Virgil’s jaw tense. “It’s good to have him home for a while. For him too, I think.” He keeps his voice low, conspirative. Virgil makes a soft noise of agreement beside him, unwilling to comment more and draw John’s attention to their conversation.

The astronaut is buried in a _Grandma Tracy_ _brand_ cable knit sweater, his posture curled over the heat of the stovetop, pancakes quickly piling up. He’s all thick socks and subtle shivers, even though their Island is definitely too close to the equator for him being _cold_ to make much sense. Unaware of the scrutiny, the astronaut frowns and bends to inspect the panhandle, close enough that he should probably be wearing those glasses of his. He wiggles the bolt that connects the handle to the dish of the pan like it’s coming loose.

 _Space messes you up_ . Gordon reminds himself grimly. _It’s gotta be one of them whack space things_. He turns to ask Virgil about it but there’s a clatter of the spatula into the pan, and he whips round to see John’s face go grey, one hand pressed to his chest where he can feel his heart thrumming unsteadily.

“Alright John?” Virgil’s on his feet faster than Gordon can process what’s happening. He sounds wary but not panicked and the youngest of them finds that reassuring.

“Yeah, stood up too fast from the cupboard, is all.” John blinks a few times, looking over at Virgil as if surprised he’s suddenly so close. Like his vision has just faded back in. “I, uh…” Virgil very gently guides him away from the hot stove, lifting the spatula from the pan.

“Go take your oatmeal and sit with Gordon for five,” Virgil instructs, no room in his tone for argument. “I’ll finish them up.” John makes pancakes American style, thick, buttery and ever so fluffy, and there’s already a tall stack of them fresh out the pan; it’s not going to take much finishing up. “What’d’ya want on them?” Virgil has evidently decided that his hovering is better dedicated to John than Gordon right now. He makes his way over and gently pushes his hip into John’s to get him to move over. “I’ll do the toppings, John can you sit with Gordon?”

“Got any berries? Syrup?” Eating lots of fruit is a bit of a leftover habit from Gordon’s Olympic days, fuelled by life on a practically tropical Island, though now that he's allowed more sugar he’s definitely addicted. Much to everyone else’s horror, when the words _Gordon Tracy_ and _sugar high_ are put together.

“Strawberries?” Virgil offers from behind the fridge door as he rummages through the chaos. Said strawberries are starting to look like they need eating; a little wilted and a couple going kind of mushy. He’ll pick out the best bits, slicing off bad, mushy flesh with a sharp little paring knife. “Oh there’s a mixed bag of frozen berries in the back here,” He discovers, upon further rooting around in the fridge and freezer. “Want a bit of both?” Sounds good to him and Gordon seems to agree, the kid flashing him a thumbs up from his seat at the table.

John’s brought his plain, boring old oatmeal over to perch opposite his brother. Having him hanging around for _breakfast,_ sitting at the table _with_ them… it’s a more unusual sight than Gordon would ever like to admit. It reminds him a little again, uncomfortably, of after the Hydrofoil. John had been around for more breakfasts then. For a while.

John, probably without even noticing he’s doing it, squeezes the hand resting on the table into a fist and Gordon acts completely without thinking as he reaches out to touch it. He runs one finger, feather-light over the sharp peaks of John’s knuckles, feeling the hard ridge of each one. The spaceman raises an eyebrow at him, curious, tolerant.

“Sorry,” Gordon says, withdrawing his hand and watching as those ginger brows furrow, confused. “I, uh…”

“Pancakes!” He’s saved from having to admit he was checking that John was really _there_ by Virgil springing over carrying a plate stacked high with perfect golden circles, smothered in berries and syrup. It gets set down between them, blocking John’s hand from Gordon’s line of sight. It makes John feel so much further away than the other side of the table. Might as well be 22,400 miles, but Gordon would never admit it aloud.

He wouldn’t have a giant, golden stack of pancakes, dripping syrup, if John were up in space though.

“Hey, if you think I can eat all that you’re mad.” Gordon can’t help the ripple of thrilled delight that rolls up his spine though. He’s had nothing concrete to eat but a peanut butter sandwich and that slice of pie since they got home.

“Just do your best, Champ.” Virgil claps a friendly hand on his upper arm, ruffles his hair, and settles into the seat beside him, intent on murdering the stack of his own.

Quiet falls between the three brothers, interrupted only by the sound of chewing and John’s spoon scraping against the ceramic of his oatmeal bowl.

“So, uh… Not heading back up to ‘the office’ soon, Johnno?” Gordon really hopes not. John shoots him a _look_ for the nickname but licks his spoon clean and shakes his head.

“Not yet, I get the feeling I’m of more use down here at the moment.” And isn’t that kind of upsetting; that the spaceman has broken the problem down into not what he _wants_ to do, but how _useful_ he is. “I… It’d be good to see Scott back on his feet before I go. Besides, Eos has a handle on things up on Five, and we’re fielding calls out to local authorities the best we can. If anything really major comes up I need to be down here and ready to fly.”

“When was the last time _you_ flew anything that wasn’t in space,” Gordon snorts. He spoons a strawberry off his plate and plops it in John’s bowl. The astronaut looks considerately at it for a moment, then shoots him a smile, grateful. He _is_ getting sick of plain oatmeal. One strawberry isn’t gonna hurt.

“I’m up to date on the training sims.” He tells them, because of course he is. “I don’t anticipate any major problems if I have to take any of the Birds out.”

“If you ding Four, I’ll put bleach in your shampoo,” Gordon threatens idly, squinting at him. 

“I wouldn't dare.” John raises his hands in objective surrender, but he looks amused.

Virgil looks over at the aquanaut with a raised eyebrow. “Gordo, you’re worried about a ding when Brains has had to scrape nanocrete off it? Rebuild it? _Twice_?”

Gordon glances at Virgil, his expression a mix of amusement and _‘don’t take his side’_.

John cracks a small smile at Virgil before looking back to Gordon.

“I promise to look after her, if necessary.” John says, placating and even between them. “But I don’t imagine it will be.” His eyes flick down to the watch at his wrist, his connection to Thunderbird Five and his precious little AI, wondering if he should check in with her, just in case. “Mmm…” Oatmeal finished, John pushes his chair back and stands, all long lines and seriousness. “I’m going to check in with ‘upstairs’,” A nod toward his wrist makes it clear what he means. “Hang in there, Gordon.” He hesitates, then pats an awkward hand down on his brother’s shoulder. The contact blooms warmth idyllically in his synapses. “I’ll be at Dad’s desk. If you need anything at all, just let me know.”

“Thanks, John.” Gordon grins sunnily at him, “You’re the best.” Virgil makes a mock offended noise somewhere behind him, as if wounded, but there’s no kind of heat to it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Short but sweet! Sorry for the gap between updates, Kelly's not been about writing much and I'm terrible at keeping anything going on my own! Here's a bit more though and I fully intend to wrap this all up somehow, hehe! It'd be amazing if you could drop us a kudos and comment with your thoughts xx


End file.
